Tasmania’s Gordon Power Station undergoing major refurbishment

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Tasmania's largest hydroelectric power station generates 13 per cent of the state's energy demands. Now, the Gordon Power Station is having its turbines refurbished - after almost half a century of operation.

Transcript

00:00Hey, over here.

00:06This is Gordon Dam, part of Tasmania's biggest and Australia's fifth largest hydroelectrical

00:12power station.

00:19This dam wall's 140 metres high.

00:22That's one and a half times the height of the Statue of Liberty.

00:29Nearby, 180 metres underground in the power station, three turbines can produce 432 megawatts

00:37of electricity.

00:39That's enough to power 10 million light bulbs at the same time.

00:44So approximately 90,000 litres per second flow through these turbines and that's enough

00:48to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool in about 25 seconds.

00:52Hydro Tasmania is upgrading two of the three turbines.

00:56The planning effort involved in these sorts of refurbishments is pretty extensive.

01:00Approximately three to four years designing, procuring, manufacturing of new components

01:05designed specifically for this power station.

01:08It's a big day for us here, we're planning to remove the stator from number two machine.

01:13A stator is the fixed outer shell of the turbine and is wrapped in copper wire.

01:19When the rotor, which is covered in electromagnets, spins around the stator, it generates electricity.

01:27Mate, it's on.

01:30Removing it is no mean feat.

01:33Weighing almost 180 tonnes, it requires two cranes to delicately lift it out.

01:39Top!

01:40Yep.

01:41Balancing the load between both cranes took a whole day of fine tuning, but in just over

01:46an hour, the stator is removed.

01:49We get to play a part in pulling this machine to pieces, putting in some new equipment and

01:54then building it back up.

01:56The $78 million project to refurbish the two turbines will allow them to be used for another

02:0230 years.

02:03Powerine, on for tomorrow.

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