The World's Largest Hydro-Turbine Unit With 1000 MW Capacity, Baihetan Hydropower Station (China)

http://gabrielemartufi.altervista.org © The World's Largest Hydro-Turbine Unit With 1000 MW Capacity / Baihetan Hydropower Station / 2025 The world's largest turbine produces renewable energy. The world’s largest turbine is a hydropower turbine (Francis turbine) and can produce 1000 MW of renewable energy. Not one, but sixteen of these mega-turbines (Francis turbines) are being installed at the Baihetan hydropower station in China between June 2021 and July 2022. By comparison, the largest offshore wind turbine in the world has a capacity of 15 MW and will be commercially available in 2024. Eight turbine runners of Baihetan are equipped with 15 blades, each weighing 12 tons. The others are equipped with 30 blades, 15 short ones weighing 3.8 tons and 15 long ones weighing 8.5 tons each. The design of the turbine allows for the conversion of 96.7% of the kinetic energy from water into electric energy, a unique performance, given the dimensions of the equipment. A single unit, which comprises a turbine, a generator and its ancillary equipment, is 50 m high and weighs more than 8000 tons, almost as much as the weight of the Eiffel Tower. The stability of the equipment is impressive: when the turbines on the left bank spin at 111.1 revolutions per minute, the units swing on a scale smaller than the diameter of a single strand of hair (0.05 mm). There are only 125 units with a capacity of over 700 MW currently under construction and in operation in the world, 104 of them are in China, where four of the world’s top five hydropower stations are located. To deliver the 1000 MW turbine, engineers had to innovate on a range of technical matters. For example, before the construction of Baihetan station, the highest voltage of generators was only 23 kV. But the station required a rated voltage of 24 kV. Progress in air cooling technology, to prevent overheating of the equipment, was also necessary. The Largest Hydro-Turbine in the World (Biggest Francis Turbine, The Largest Hydroelectric Turbine, Biggest Turbine in the World, Largest Francis Turbine In The World, World's Largest Power Station): 1000 MW Francis turbine (1GW, the power of a nuclear reactor); Type A: 15 blades of 12 tons (left bank station); Type B: 15 long blades + 15 short blades, with a total weight of 12.3 tons (right bank station); Unit dimensions: 50 m high, 8000 tons; 111.1 revolutions per minute (left bank units), 107.1 revolutions per minute (right bank units); Baihetan hydropower plant: 16000 MW installed capacity (16 GW); 300 m-level double curvature arch dam; Maximum dam height: 289 m; Centre-line arc length: 709 m; 8 x 1000 MW units on left bank produced by Dongfang Electric; 8 x 1000 MW units on right bank produced by Harbin Electric. The Francis turbine is a type of water turbine. It is an inward-flow reaction turbine that combines radial and axial flow concepts. Francis turbines are the most common water turbine in use today, and can achieve over 95% efficiency. The process of arriving at the modern Francis runner design took from 1848 to approximately 1920. It became known as the Francis turbine around 1920, being named after British-American engineer James B. Francis who in 1848 created a new turbine design. Francis turbines are primarily used for producing electricity. The power output of the electric generators generally ranges from just a few kilowatts up to 1000 MW, though mini-hydro installations may be lower. A wicket gate around the outside of the turbine's rotating runner controls the rate of water flow through the turbine for different power production rates. Francis turbines are usually mounted with a vertical shaft, to isolate water from the generator. The Francis turbine is a type of reaction turbine, a category of turbine in which the working fluid comes to the turbine under immense pressure and the energy is extracted by the turbine blades from the working fluid. A part of the energy is given up by the fluid because of pressure changes occurring on the blades of the turbine, quantified by the expression of degree of reaction, while the remaining part of the energy is extracted by the volute casing of the turbine. At the exit, water acts on the spinning cup-shaped runner features, leaving at low velocity and low swirl with very little kinetic or potential energy left. The turbine's exit tube is shaped to help decelerate the water flow and recover the pressure. Francis turbines may be designed for a wide range of heads and flows. This versatility, along with their high efficiency, has made them the most widely used turbine in the world. The Baihetan Dam (Baihetan Hydroelectric Power Plant, simplified Chinese: 白鹤滩大坝; traditional Chinese: 白鶴灘大壩; pinyin: Báihètān Dàbà) is a large hydroelectric dam on the Jinsha River, an upper stretch of the Yangtze River in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, in southwest China. Largest Francis Turbine In The World, World's Second-Biggest Hydroelectric Dam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiheta...