Laramie River Station generates more power

This bright, shiny new turbine at Laramie River Station Unit Three has "more, more, more" to make "more" electricity without using more energy. Here's how.

(John Ciz/Plant engineer): "We started this project the very first day of the outage. As soon as the equipment was cool enough to work on, we started disassembling and it's been going on ever since."

Each of the three units at Laramie River Station is getting a turbine upgrade. Plant engineer John Ciz says the difference in the intermediate pressure section of the turbine is the blades. They have a more curved, sweeping shape, than the old square blades. In the new turbines high pressure section, there are eight rows of blades, rather than six.

(John Ciz): "The blades are designed a little better too. Theres fewer blades, they're spaced farther apart, and they're shaped a little bit differently."

These blades also have that sweeping shape a product of computer engineering.

(John Ciz): "The ability to make the blades more complex now is better than 20 years ago. They have better tooling, better machines to make the blades more efficient. They've also added two additional stages that essentially break it down a little further and get more efficiency out of it."

Each new turbine will put out an extra twelve megawatts of electricity.

(John Ciz): "That's the whole point, is to be able to generate more megawatts with the exact same steam flow."

The blades are manufactured in England, the rotor is forged in Poland, and the fixed blades and fit-up assembly is done in Mexico. Each upgrade costs about $8 million. Once all three units have a new turbine, LRS will put out an extra 36 megawatts. Another project during this plant outage is the generator rewind. All these bars, or windings, are sawed off and pulled out. Maintenance planner and scheduler Myron Mattern says these are basically copper pipes, made to allow water through for cooling. Once all the windings are out, the generator is cleaned down to the bare steel. Then, two rows of new windings are fitted in -- 84 bars in all. Hence, a rewind.

(Myron Mattern/Maintenance planner/scheduler): "You don't want copper bars moving around in there, rubbing holes. You get water leaks, then you have major leak problems."

The reason this rewind had to be done was because General Electric found that this model of generator was having water leakage problems. Mattern says fixing this problem now is cheaper in the long run.

(Myron Mattern): "An on-line failure is catastrophic. You're down for months, instead of weeks."

To top off this outage, theres work being done in the boiler checking for leaky tubes. LRS Unit Three will be back on-line by the end of May. For Basin Electric, I'm Tracie Bettenhausen.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Laramie
• River
• Station
• Basin
• Electric
• Power
• Cooperative
• Wheatland
• Wyoming
• coal
• power
• plant
• energy
• efficiency
• Bismarck
• North
• Dakota

[MrCriticOfAll]

I always thought turbins were worn on the head and turbines produce thrust.

[pc2drth]

@MrCriticOfAll You're thinking of a turban.

[SaGalv]

is this really a steam turbine generator? Becuase the design of this thing seems pretty danm identical to a gas turbine which uses the combustion of fuel to the turn the turbine directly....wonder if they just made up the steam turbine part sothe general public who watched this could try and understand how this thing worked.  hahaha

[pc2drth]

@SaGalv It's a steam turbine. You could take apart a gas turbine and it would look much like what’s shown. From what I've been told, a turbine is a turbine. Thanks for your comment. :)

[SaGalv]

@pc2drth a turbine is a turbine, but a steam turbine is not a gas turbine. Both use a similar concept, but they both operate alot differently, for one a steam turbine uses external combustion and a gas turbine uses internal combustion

[pc2drth]

@SaGalv The turbine shown in the video is the HP/LP section of steam turbine (high pressure/low pressure) from a coal-based power plant.

[b3boneman]

Why are none of the processes being accomplished in the USA????? Thanks GE you nefarious non taxpaying buffoons!!!

[techdavey1000]

@b3boneman Its probably because England is where the Industrial Revolution began and fortunately we still have some world class companies such as Rolls-Royce who are geniuses when it comes to turbine blades. This type of technology is extremely difficult to perfect and you can't just model it in play-doh. Look on the bright side, with all those extra megawatts for free it should soon pay for itself. Pity that Victoria Falls is still running to waste but its a long way off. Hydro needs no fuel!

[MrBarrelson]

Laramie Cigarettes ? You know what im talking about

[R52OSO]

turbineeeee

[DepakoteMeister]

Turban? That lady flunked elocution lessons eh?

[albduke1]

O k boys load that copper in back of my truck! lol

[mlcoo17]

Her inability to make the " i " sound in the word "turbine" is because she uses up all her energy in over stating her " o " sounds ( like the way she says Mexico ). LOL.

[ismaelkhan]

lol turban upgrade, turbine you idiot!

[archuletajustin]

I need this for my lettuce garden

[MrCriticOfAll]

@pc2drth Yes that too my friend.