Home·Case studies·Hydropower revamp
Hydropower revamp: +35% output without new turbines.
The owner assumed the turbines had to be replaced. A full performance audit found the larger loss upstream, and a phased fix recovered the output.
+35% output after the first two phases.
% output
Situation
A run-of-river hydro plant had lost more than a third of its rated output over two decades of operation. The owner’s working assumption was that the turbines needed replacing, a multi-year capital project that was hard to finance and would have kept the plant offline for months.
What we did
We ran a full performance audit before recommending any capital spend: intake trash-rack losses, penstock friction, runner condition, and generator efficiency, each benchmarked against the original commissioning tests. The runners had lost some efficiency to cavitation pitting, but the larger loss was upstream: a partially silted intake and a fouled trash rack were cutting the available head. We built the case for a phased fix instead of a turbine replacement: dredge and clean the intake first, recoat the runners second, and only rewind the generators if those two steps didn’t close the gap.
What changed
Output rose 35% after the first two phases, so the owner skipped the generator rewind entirely. Dredging and recoating together cost under a fifth of the turbine-replacement budget the plant had been planning around, and the unit never went fully offline during the work.