Generator Stator Installed | Hinkley Point C

Lifting of the world's largest electricity generator into Hinkley Point C’s first turbine hall.  
The Arabelle Solutions generator stator weighs in at more than 450 tonnes and is 12 metres long.  
This vital component will be coupled with the world's most powerful turbine - capable of delivering low carbon electricity to 3 million homes. 
#BuiltByUs

[@peternufc81]

Top of the range facility

[@advisorsandy2068]

Awesome EDF!

[@litigantdad1974]

457 tonnes lifted with canvass strops, wow! Impressive

[@AdeFlint]

That's only 115tonne per lifting trunion, and those straps will be type tested well above that lift. There are much bigger lifts on straps.

[@advisorsandy2068]

Kevlar but I still wouldn't trust it.

[@wolfgangrenner4152]

It is said, that this generator has 1770 MW. The EPR was classified to deliever 1600 MW electric. Is Hinkley C a further power expansion to nearly 1800 MW ? What is with Finnlands, French and Chinese EPR ? Are they all 1600 MW with a single turbine ? May be two turbines share the steam generated ?

[@BezosAutomaticEye]

think you have to deduct the hotel load from that top figure. meaning NET 1600MW

[@AdeFlint]

Correct. The rated output of an EPR is 1650MWe....the clue is in the e: export. Generator is rated to cover the export and station load of around 50MW, so will be notionally 1700MW

[@AdeFlint]

Generator power also has a pf 1.0 value, which i would assume is the 1770MW stated earlier. This will operate at a lagging of around 0.85 to 0.90 which reduces the "real" generator rating as the lagging pf creates more I (current) related heat which the generator has to remove using its standard coolers.

[@AdeFlint]

The turbines don't share the steam source on these units. Both reactors and turbines are on separate pairs of islands . I did a bit of reading up on the Arabelle steam turbine, and it appears they've redesigned the last stage LP blades and they're longer than ever....so that explains the small output increases. Blade (both static and rotating) design is always exploring the boundaries, and as has long been the case output can be increased on replants. This has that increase built in. Some of the French pwr units were seeing quite large power increases via replants in the 90s and nouties

[@campbellcampbell4157]

The most expensive electricity per Kw of all time. Approved by David Cameron who is now a "financial consultant" to the project. Tax payers money going straight to his investor friends.

[@evboi35266]

Big reason why it’s expensive is because there is very little actual taxpayers money used in constructing it. Using private money is expensive!

[@AdeFlint]

Spot on. That's 9.2pence per kwh to the customer. My current rate is about 26p, so this is an utter bargain. Doesn't work so well for night use rates at 7p or so, but small beer over the 5 hours the small amount of customers get to use it. I'd say "well done, Mr Cameron," and the same to all politicians who got HPC over the line. This is cheap baseline power for us all to benefit from.....but there are always whingers.

[@IM35461]

Why go for such a large non standard generator? Why not just have four more "off the shelf" sized generators and then if one fails you still have 75% capacity. Smaller ones would have also been easy to transport. If it goes wrong in operation it will be delivering no power to zero homes.

[@AdeFlint]

What do you call "an off the shelf generator"? Having been in the turbine generator design, development and installation for decades, I've never seen an off the shelf generator. This is a standard Alstom top gas 4 pole generator which operates at half grid frequency (hence 4 poles rather than 2) and works with the relatively cool, wet steam turbines which receive the reactor secondary steam circuit energy. It's all very well proven in the French reactor fleet on their Framatome PWR units. Personally, I'd have preferred a Sizewell B kind of setup with two 660mw units connected to each reactor secondary as that gives a little redundancy when the turbine generator set goes "whoops".....as it definitely will at least once.

[@paulmiller6277]

Oh yes would love to see the shelf the off the shelf generator would sit on.

[@AdeFlint]

It would be significant. The upfront costs ( £millions) knowledge of exact requirements and the 2 years it takes to build one could also be against shelving any.

[@tonamg53]

@OliverMayo-o9i The main reason airlines prefer 2 engine on their planes is because more engines means more drag which means more fuel burn. Generator doesn’t create drag sitting still.

[@tonamg53]

@ No, the only reason they choose to go with two engines is almost purely based on lower fuel burn. Also, 4 smaller engines are cheaper to buy, easier to maintain and doesn’t brake down as often as 2 humongous engines. That’s a fact.

[@geoffalder2455]

Just a thought. If we weren't going for 'the world's largest' all the time then it might have been built already and have been less likely to have blown the budget. Did we need to gold plate this much?

[@1080pMarco]

It Is called "scale economy". And another term is important here: "first of a kind": those plants are new and therefore nobody had the experience in building them. The next "copies" will be built faster thanks to the troubleshooting and experience gained here.

[@msxcytb]

@@1080pMarco Yep. Tens of years of not building such facilities, people being scared by some countries(Germany in Europe) about factually the safest form of generation and here we go- price of restarting industry is high. Hope for very fast learning curve and 100+years of service for this facility (should be possible and it will put the price and long build time into different perspective)

[@VictorHHH7]

The next ones will be built quicker and cheaper

[@msxcytb]

@@VictorHHH7 Fingers crossed. "We" are better in making things in scale in any field- no reason why modern NPPs should be any different.

[@geoffalder2455]

I get the arguments. I will be amazed if the production run for this reactor type in the UK is more than 4 units. I hope the experience gained from these engineering cathedrals is worth the diversion of capital. History will tell.

[@AdeFlint]

Your whole schtick about these baseload large nuclrar plants is stuck in the last century, and is the of thing im fed up hearing. France have been operating up to 1600MW low speed (4 pole) single TG units for decades, and these are just the next in line with a few tweaks. They have teething issues, but so did small coal, big coal, small gas, ccgt gas (nightmares) and small nuke, then large nuke. But as engineers, we fixed them all. I've designed, developed, built, trouble shooted no end of small to large GT, coal, nuke and my wife designed and tested industrial (ie large) GT blading. We do know a bit. And I've started and stopped a few in my years on plant. Ive also seen major trips, partial grid failures and massive generator failures which never resulted in a grid collapse. Rest easy.

[@gufpott]

When that thing trips at full load, it will sink the UK. Wind generation doesn't help - it will need several large firm generating units running part-loaded to provide reserve to "catch frequency" if there is a trip. This is an example of nuclear engineers showing off their big willies.

[@AdeFlint]

No it won't. Big coal stations of 2000MW have tripped and thr grid survived. I was on station in Ironbridge doing tests and other than a "hands off" whilst the grid stabilised, it coped well.

[@AdeFlint]

Another point worth making here about its danger to the national power grid: at least 2 commissioning tests for each unit will consist of full load trips: and islanding test where the Turbine Generator are tripped from the grid at full load and remain at operational conditions to power the "plant island" and a full load trip which trips the Turbine generator and dumps 170pMW of steam to the turbine drains. I've been in a 1000MW station where the latter didn't work well and we tripped the lot due to a transformer failure. My brown underpants went in the bin after that one. I can assure those of a nervous disposition, 1700MW insgantly exiting the grid isn't disastrous. It creates a dew fluctuations, but the systems are there to protect the rest of it and the black start GTs soon kick in...and there are more of those than there have ever been.

[@gufpott]

@@AdeFlint Big coal stations were never 2000MW in a single generating unit. They were 4 x 500 MW units, and the 500MW units designed to be independent of each other to avoid common faults brining down multiple units in one go. The generator in the video is 1500MW in a single rotating machine, so it will need a large amount of operating reserve alongside.. If there is a frequency drop, frequency sensitive relays in the distribution system will start shedding load by automatically tripping off supply. The cost of holding operating reserve is dear because it has to be spread across a number of rotating generating units operating inefficiently at part load. Ofgem consulted the cost of holding reserve for these large units back in 2010, asking if the nuclear operator should bear the cost, or if it should be "socialised" into everybody's electricity bills. The decision was to "socialise", which means you and I bear the cost of an inefficiently large design. www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/docs/2010/10/gsr007-ia-final_0.pdf

[@gufpott]

@@AdeFlint Commissioning has to test full load trips because it is essential to show the units can survive these before they are finally handed over. But commissioning tests can be planned, so you know exactly what was going to happen and set up reserve to cover the test. NESO has to constantly hold operating spinning reserve across the network to cover for the "single infeed loss" of the biggest generator . This is presently 1000MW for Sizewell C. In future it will be 1500MW for a Hinkley Point C unit risk of trip. This operating reserve will NOT be provided by asynchronous wind generators because they don't have the technical capability to ramp-up in an emergency. A purely nuclear and renewable mix on the network is therefore infeasible. There will have to be fossil-fired power stations kept in operation to provide the operating reserve. This will be expensive enough, but if these part-loaded fossil fired generating units are to be carbon-captured, operating reserve will be hideously expensive.. Black start GTs take 10 minutes to synchronise, and the distribution network will have long started load shedding on frequency before these black start units can respond. Your solution is not what NESO will do. It will be forced to hold spinning reserve close enough to Hinkley Point, and we will all end up paying even more for electricity ... yet again!

[@AdeFlint]

Sadly, you're incorrect. There is no "spinning reserve" as such now, it's storage hydro and soon, batteries, as the large battery farms are completed. And a peak loading GT can start and synchronise in seconds: that's what they're designed for. Add to that the gas turbines which will still be operating as load correction and 1.7GW isn't a grid trip. I've seen bigger load sheds and you didn't even miss your tea. Relax about big baseload units. They're very unstressed.