Hydro power plant monitoring with HBM: Measuring the efficiency of turbine blades

Improve Efficiency of a Water Power Plant and Help to Grow Green Energy

This story tells us how the efficiency of an existing water power plant increased up to 10%, using modern strain-gauge technology and the PMX measuring system. The Iron Gate I (Djerdap Gorge) Hydroelectric Power Station is the largest dam on the Danube River, and one of the largest hydro power plants in Europe. It is located on the Iron Gate gorge, between Romania and Serbia. The project started in 1964 as a joint-venture between the governments of Romania and Yugoslavia for the construction of a major dam on the Danube River, which would serve both countries. At the time of completion in 1972, it was one of the largest hydroelectric power stations in the world with twelve units generating 2,052 MW, divided equally between the two countries at 1,026 MW each.

Up and running with HBM

The measurement and control system needs to fulfill several tasks, such as fast and reliable measurements, easy set-up, real-time calculations, diagnosis information, no additional software installation, and efficient pricing. These can be archieved with the PMX measurement and control system. In the first step, PMX was used as a four-channel amplifier for voltage inputs. The first input was the voltage from the telemetry system for torque measurements using the strain gauges installed on the turbine. The second input was the telemetry system for axial force measurement in the turbine, and the third input was rotational speed. All signals were sampled with 19.2 kHz, which guarantees a high measurement-bandwidth and evaluation of the measurement signals. All adjustments to the PMX system are handled via the standard Ethernet-interface and the internal PMX web server. This solution offers the benefit of adjustments being done via the machine network or even remotely if the additional Wi-Fi is available. So each engineer had a real-time view of the application and the status of the test. An integrated operator control prevented insecure operation.