Industrial History: Power Plant Overview and Components

I've been documenting some power plants in my "towns blog" with the label "powerPlant." Here I'm recording photos of equipment in a power plant other than the generator units and control panels.

I found enough photos of feeders and pulverizers that they have their own notes.

I start with some overview videos

safe_image for 9:50 YouTube Video
Alabama Power's Plant Miller How Electricity Is Generated 3D Animated Tour

5:42 video @ 0:14

16:00 video @ 1:34

Mike Rodriguez posted
Museum piece
Ronald Amberger: From the era when machines were multicolor brass bound works of art.

Ronald Amberger: I was engineer at Elliott for many years and was responsible for everything on the front end: Governor, servomotor, overspeed trip, valve gear and steam chest and valves. Brings back memories.

Leonard Werda: I believe I seen this at GE training center in NY a nice piece.

Glenn Cahill: Leonard Werda it’s in Houston now

Joe Prindle: I ran a 7500 kilowatt GE unit built in 1926 at the Lynn River Works. 400 psig inlet, 135 pound automatic extraction and a Westinghouse condensor and air ejector. It was unit 1 at Consolidated Papers in Wisconsin Rapids, WI. It was a great job and I loved running that turbine, it had a lot more personality than our other two units, both Dresser Rands built in 1976 and 1995.

Randy Basham: I operated 2 of those. 300kva and a 400kva.

Rowland Ketchersid: Lol there is a sign there at the ge training center Houston that says no pictures

UNION Millwright posted

Zach Hoppe: Ai

Mikayla McHugh: Zach Hoppe not this time! This is a BASF Gas turbine in Germany. This photograph was taken in 1917 during ww1. They had woman in the powerhouse doing general maintenance and millwrighting because there was a critical shortage in male labor from so many of them being sent to work. After the war they were pushed back out of the workforce. Woman like her crawled so that woman like me could run.

[The turbine must be out-of-frame because the thing that is spinning is the dynamo. At least the unshielded spokes have a handrail in front of them.]

Terry Haldin shared
The good old days‼️

Andrzej Witek commented on Mike's post
This one is our steam turbine - fully working till today [Apr 25, 2024]. STAL LAVAL 3,96 MW.

Joean Ngew posted

Pieter Langenhoven: HP, IP and double LP steam turbine.

Marshall W Ken: Pieter Langenhoven Yep, and about 80% of the power is generated in that 1st. (HP) stage, also known as the impulse stage.

Jack Jennings posted
Boiler guts
Phillip Ball-Reed: Superheats?

7 photos of the many pipes inside a Combustion Engineering tangential fired super-critical boiler. The post has many interesting comments. "corner burner" is another term seen in the comments.

6 photos of a relief valve replacement in Fr. Martin Power Station, Maidsville, WV.

Giving hydro power some attention:

Alabama Power posted
Building the foundation.
Image Courtesy of the Alabama Power Archives.

Andy Michel posted

Historical Photo:

It appears the turbine bearing oil level is a bit high...

Greg Mallory posted
Nice clean BFP, steam driven.
Dennis DeBruler: I've learned today that BFP means boiler feed pump.

Greg Mallory posted
Front to back ...... BFP Booster Pump, Booster pump drive gear, BFP, BFP turbine. Every thing on the same shaft.
William B. Hearn: Understand that, hot and cold alignment could be different. If I remember correctly, at Michell #3 our GE Turbine to Worthington BFP was 0.010” low turbine to pump on a cold turbine. Zurn force oil lubricated coupling.
Tim Golden: Has to be PITA to align. [I'm too shy to ask what PITA means.]
Dan McQuade: We have several like this, but the main BFP is on the opposite side of the turbine.
William B. Hearn: The only plant I worked that had BFP booster pumps was Pleasants PS. They were motor driven separately from the Steam Turbine Driven BFP’s.

JR Mueller posted
HP [high pressure] turbine inspection underway, 650MW unit
Cory Stansbury: As a nuke guy (i.e. garbage steam), it's always amazing how small those first stages are on superheated and supercrit steam units.

JR Mueller posted seven photos with the comment: "Feed pump turbines getting overhauled this outage."

Greg Mallory posted two photos with the comment: "Man these were bears! Soot blowing air compressors! 300+ psi, multi-stage"

Greg Mallory posted two images with the comment: "Trash! The QRO exam required to operate a waste boiler is probably one of the most challenging a Steam Engineer with ever take!"

TVA posted four photos of "workers are installing 244 new, more efficient blades on two low-pressure turbine rotors" for the Watts Bar Unit 2.

4
Some power plant components need big cranes. In this case, all four of the original steam generators are being replaced.

1 of 4 photos posted by Caleb Johnson, cropped
Turbine and generator outage, getting ready to cut the rotor.

Brian Kroeker posted three photos with the comment: "On annual shutdowns some people had to check all of the tubes and wash them from the mud drum. Tempered water was used from the deaerator while the boiler was warm and still wet so it was quite warm in there. They gave us goggles for PPE (LOL). This was decades ago."

Joe Finamore: That is a large mud drum!

Brian Kroeker: To think that this was done in the days of adding Hydrazine (shudder).

Wayne Karberg posted two photos with the comment: "Water Cooled Stator, Eastlake U5. Now a synchronous condenser. In crossview stereo."

[All five units at Eastlake got converted. "Condenser" is another word for capacitor. And the comments talk about supporting the VAR of the grid. That is, I think they are using these to offset the inductive loads on the grid caused by induction motors. Now that I'm thinking about it, I presume that transformers also introduce an inductive load. Some comments talk about how it was tricky starting up one of these units.]

22:06 video @ 16:17

Bull Run Power Plant plans to convert a generator to a synchronous converter.

Greg Mallory posted two images with the comment: "You don't see these everyday! Flue Gas Desulfurization Jet Bubbler System ...... All exiting flue gas is introduced to a bath of lime slurry, no gas goes untouched by slurry. A lot different than conventional wet and dry scrubbers."

Frank Huang posted three images with the comment: "dust collector--work with filter bags and cages."

[A comment indicated that they had to replace the "bags" about every four months. I think bag houses have replaced electrostatic precipitators.]

It drives me nuts that they won't give the name of the dam so that I can put this photo into the correct notes.

Erin L. Wining posted
Nothing like a chinook wind melting the snow accumulation to bring on the power.
Jereme Harris: We are running full tilt and the rivers still outrunning us currently. Hopefully it will settle down over the weekend.

2 of 34 interior shots of a 1927 power plant posted by Decay Addiction. (source)