The increase in contributions from non base load renewables, such as wind and solar, can have adverse effects on the stability of an electrical grid. In this study, the possibility of rapidly loading a Francis turbine from a tail water depression (TWD) mode for providing additional system frequency control is investigated. Based on the analysis of full-scale TWD test results and key findings fr...

The mechanical design of hydraulic turbines is conditioned by the dynamic response of the runner that is usually estimated by a computational model. Nevertheless, the runner has complex boundary conditions that are difficult to include in the computational model. One of these boundary conditions is the water in which the runner is submerged. The effect of the added mass and damping of water can...

A general method for testing nonlinearity in time series is described and applied to measurements of different pressure data inside the draft tube surge of a real Francis turbine. Comparing the current original time series to an ensemble of surrogates time series, suitably constructed to mimic the linear properties of the original one, we was able to distinguish a linear stochastic from a nonli...