Recently, the hydropower industry has been seeing a combination of improved focus and new operational challenges. For many companies, hydropower assets are a key part of their strategy to meet renewable energy quotas. This means that investments have returned for plant modernization, efficiency improvement, and the availability of remote operation.
At the same time, with more solar and wind installations bringing intermittent power into the grid, hydro plants are required (and rewarded) to compensate peaks, starting up multiple times a day and running especially at night. This poses significant operational and maintenance challenges.
At Baker Hughes, we believe that improved control automation and condition monitoring can help Hydropower operators meet their challenges, thanks to integrated systems and easy to use software. See more details about our specific Hydropower solutions below.
Protecting, maintaining, upgrading hydropower plants through control automation and condition monitoring
Maintain Mechanical and Hydraulic Systems
In today’s environment, plant availability and start-up reliability are key to your success. Because many legacy mechanical systems are robust and remain a critical system for your operation, availability of genuine spare parts and qualified field service engineering are growing concerns for many plant managers and maintenance supervisors. This is especially true when individual components can become single points of failure for the entire unit.
As the sole legal owner of The Woodward Governor Company’s hydro IP as well as all hydro related original drawings, Nexus Controls is uniquely positioned to support hydropower customers. We have a strong portfolio of certified spare parts, upgrade kits and field service to protect, maintain and improve the reliability of your critical mechanical and hydraulic equipment.
Manage Diverse Systems across your Fleet
Over time, upgrades and replacements from different manufacturers at each powerhouse has likely created a complex mix of interfaces and spare parts. In order to operate reliably and efficiently, it’s paramount to have systems that aggregate and simplify equipment management so that your operators can focus on optimization.
Nexus Controls and Bently Nevada systems have the versatility and connectivity to help you create a single integrated control and monitoring ecosystem capable of seamlessly interfacing with legacy and new equipment. These solutions provide advanced analytics capabilities while optimizing your spare parts inventory. Bently Nevada’s System 1† software and Nexus Controls’ Nexus OnCore† Control System are two potential improvements that can deliver advanced management capability
Automation and Remote Operation
As grids transition away from fossil fuels, improved operating flexibility and analytics will empower your team to take full advantage of the opportunities. Daily demand curves will require additional automation to more accurately and intelligently control plant performance and maintenance requirements. This becomes even more important as power houses shift to partial or full unmanned operation.
Nexus Controls and Bently Nevada are the right partners to identify the best solutions for each plant, bringing cyber secure systems and significant experience spanning over a century across the energy industry to bear on your automation and remote operation needs.
Tools for Condition-Based Maintenance
Hydroelectric units built in the previous century typically included rudimentary or no condition monitoring. As these machines approach end of design life and/or undergo refurbishment, more insight into component wear, fatigue, and erosion is needed, especially as they are subjected to unanticipated design changes and operating requirements. Microprocessor and new sensor technologies have resulted in machinery protection and condition monitoring systems that reliably detect problems early, automatically, and with pinpoint accuracy. Because investments in these systems for ageing and refurbished hydro units have paid back quickly in both anticipated and unexpected ways, they’re as necessary today as they’ve traditionally been for other types of generating assets.
Bently Nevada serves our large and growing hydro installed base with a worldwide, experienced field services organization, capable of turnkey installations and local or remote machinery diagnostics support. Explore the links below to learn more, and contact your Bently Nevada sales representative for a copy of our comprehensive Hydro Condition Monitoring Applications Guide.
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The Nexus OnCore Control System for Hydroelectric plants integrates in the same hardware and software platform all the main control functions for Hydroelectric plants: governor, unit auxiliaries, switch station common auxiliaries, spillway gates, etc.
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For over five decades, the Bently Nevada condition monitoring portfolio has been synonymous with the highest quality, most reliable choice available for critical machinery. With a name that is trusted worldwide for machinery protection, over six million transducers and monitoring channels have been installed around the globe. Our comprehensive selection of hydro-specific transducers, monitors, diagnostic software, and of course, services, has been designed with the unique needs of hydro operators in mind.
Hydroelectric Generator Vibrations Application Note
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Bently Nevada’s proven and popular System 1 software provides a highly scalable, connected, and cyber-secure condition monitoring platform while giving hydro users the mode-based data acquisition and specialized plots needed for long-term trending and in-depth mechanical, electrical, and hydraulic analysis.
A proper condition monitoring program can help the hydro operator detect, diagnose, and avoid (as much as possible) conditions where load, temperature, hydraulic conditions, or vibration can cause premature damage and a forced outage. The condition monitoring program can provide early warning of impending failures, allowing time to schedule maintenance outages and make repairs before small problems become large ones (or to manage the machine intelligently until an outage can be accommodated). The condition monitoring program will also provide the operator with sufficient information to make intelligent decisions regarding maintenance planning, thus limiting maintenance scope and cost to only those things that need to be done.
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The benefits of digital transformation now drive businesses in every industrial segment to move to new physical-cyber technologies, making it possible to gather and analyze rich asset data with greater efficiency and flexibility. But along with the productivity and safety gains that have increased visibility, and that data access is helping create, the need for comprehensive cybersecurity protection also increases as attack surfaces expand.
Leaning on our deep knowledge and expertise in critical infrastructure, we deploy and manage cybersecurity solutions tailored to the unique demands of your operational technology network.
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If you want to rebuild or upgrade your existing equipment and want to maintain the original Woodward Governor Company specifications, they are available for easy purchase and installation. We offer: Governor, Hydraulic Oil Pump, and Pressure tanks, as well as, Flow Control distributing valves based on the original specifications.
Nexus Controls, formally known as GE Control Solutions, is the sole owner of The Woodward Governor Company’s Hydro IP as well as all Hydro related original drawings. In 2000, The Woodward Governor Company sold their entire Hydro Division and Engine & Turbine Controls retrofit business, along with the rights, to General Electric. These businesses were the foundation of what became GE Control Solutions and in 2019 was renamed as Nexus Controls, a Baker Hughes business.
Beginning with the Woodward Governor Company and encompassing long-standing relationships with General Electric and Baker Hughes, the entire Nexus Controls story serves to demonstrate our focus on innovation, customer relationships, and measurable outcomes—the three pillars of our success.
Our history is what’s made us a leader in the power, DCS, and industrial controls markets. It’s important to us because it’s who we are.
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For decades, Nexus Controls, a Baker Hughes business, has continually supplied controls and excitation modernizations for heavy duty and aeroderivative gas, industrial and large steam, and hydro powered turbine-generators.
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