Development and Implementation of innovative adaptive governor control functions in the biggest bulb turbines of the World at Jirau Hydro Power Plant (PPT)

摘要

The Jirau hydro station is a run-of-the-river power plant with an installed capacity of 3,750 MW comprising 50 Bulb turbines; the biggest of this model in the world. The power plant was facing a series of challenges with the original governors, due to some singular characteristics at that station. This paper discusses how these characteristics affect the speed control of the units by reducing the control stability margins. A set of advanced features was developed to overcome the weaknesses created by these site characteristics that include limiters that maintain turbine operation within safe margins, disturbance detection logic and adaptive control functions. Field tests that have demonstrated important improvements in the control performance are shown in the paper.