Speed Testing of Generator

I buy scrap metal. Where is this?

I would think that the only speed testing necessary after that incident would be to see how long it took the operating personnel to change their soiled underwear. If I and some others were there a clean pair and a lot of bathroom tissue would certainly be required.

Good Luck, Old Salt

Your statement "...I am no expert..." is correct. Why do you think that lack of lube oil had anything to do with this nearly four year old incident? The damage is spectacular because of the enormous amount of energy involved, but nothing points to a lack of lube oil.

Testing of the overspeed protection systems is required after any major shutdown, and involves many trained personnel, all of whom want to live to go home after their shift is over. Occasionally things go terribly wrong, usually when multiple contingencies occur simultaneously.

In this case, according to the final report, it was a combination of human and mechanical failure. Having been on the forensic team of a number of major equipment malfunctions, I'm sure that many additional steps were put in place to minimize the chance of it happening again.

I think the company's Human Resources department will have been involved shortly afterwards.

Wow! I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that kind of test. I get nervous when I blow a fuse or trip a circuit breaker unexpectedly. The last thing I want is to earn a nickname like "Sparky"!!

This wasn't an overspeed test going bad, but it did take out two large units in Georgia for many months. Those 700 MW turbines are huge.

I don't post here much, but here is my thoughts on this man-made disaster. Obviously someone didn't follow the manual and failed to have the proper knowledgeable people on station. I remember on our steam turbine generator testing in the Navy, we were to manually over-ride the governor and walk the speed up slowly approximately 1% at a time until the overspeed safety device tripped or we got to a speed just above where it was supposed to trip then brought the speed back down to evaluate the situation for another test or manually tripped the generator turbine to shut it down. For the speed to jump from 3000 rpm to 4500 rpm in 10 seconds tells me nobody had safe control of the actions of the throttle valve.