SPbPU Specialists and Students to Modernize Luzhskaya HPP-2
The first turbine is scheduled to come online next year.
Staff from the Hydromachinery Laboratory at the Institute of Energy of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU), together with students from the university’s System Engineering Student Design Bureau, are working on a project to modernize Luzhskaya HPP-2. The plant was built in the 1950s. Its two German-made hydrogenerators were manufactured shortly after World War II and taken out of service in 2009.
Restarting the plant requires replacing the hydraulic turbine’s runner, as the existing one no longer meets modern requirements. The first stage of the turbine unit modernization involved creating a full-scale 3D model of the entire hydraulic turbine, which served as the basis for all subsequent engineering work. To design a new runner, the specialists used laser scanning to map the existing turbine flow path. The resulting data was used to build a 3D model of the original runner. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods were then used to simulate flow through the turbine passages and assess the original turbine’s performance. Several designs for the new runner blade system were developed, and the team is now selecting the optimal geometry.
The first upgraded turbine is scheduled to come online in 2027.
