Study on hydraulic transient process of K hydropower station with low head, large flow and complex long tail water system

Abstract K hydropower station is a hydraulic engineering with the main task of power generation, which is also a typical hydropower station with low head, large discharge and long tail water conveyance system. The hydraulic characteristics of these-type hydropower stations are of high water inertia, large amplitude of surge chamber water level fluctuation and poor stability of units. Therefore, due to the control requirements of the stability, the area of the horizontal section of the surge chamber is usually large, which leads to the long period of water level fluctuation of the surge chamber and the relatively long time of unit output oscillation in the transition process, and the regulating quality of the unit is often difficult to meet the control requirements due to the large inertia time constant of the water flow in the water conveyance system and the unique characteristic curve of unit. It is important to design appropriately to ensure the safe and stable operation of the hydropower station. In this paper, it is shown the process of hydraulic design of these-type stations. According to the design of K hydropower station, the simple surge chamber and restricted orifice surge chamber are compared in terms of hydraulic characteristics including the head loss of steady operation, the water level fluctuation of transition process and the stability of operation. Based on the optimized restricted orifice surge chamber, the overall calculation and analysis of the hydraulic transition process and the stability analysis of K hydropower station are carried out, it is concluded that the unit stability quality of the K power station is fine and the maximum pressure of pipe is in control, which provide strong support for the safe and stable operation of K station. The comprehensive and thorough analysis in this paper can provide reference for the design of the similar projects.