At present, pumped storage is the only system to store huge amounts of energy. The surplus of energy in the electrical grid is used for pumping water from a lower to a higher reservoir (pump operation). At peak hours or in case of emergency this water goes down generating electrical energy (turbine operation). In the last years, due to the massive entrance of wind power, the number of start and stop cycles have increased dramatically as well as the operation at very low loads. In this new scenario more cases of damage have been reported and an effective vibration monitoring is necessary.\ud \ud Reversible pump-turbines (RPT) are high performance machines that have to change operation from pump to turbine mode (reversing runner rotation and flow direction) in a short time. Due to their special design characteristics (large power concentration) and operating conditions, they generate large pressure pulsations and forces when in operation.\ud In this paper the vibration monitoring of large RPT units have been analysed. The results obtained after 15 years of monitoring several power plants with this type of machines have been used for the analysis. In the last years, most of the supervised power plants have been monitored on-line remotely.\ud First the monitoring system used is described. The main types of excitation forces expected during the operation of these machines are studied especially the most characteristic and distinctive that are the pressure pulsations due to the rotor/stator interaction.\ud The vibration signatures measured in machines with different designs are analysed in detail and compared with the signatures of conventional turbines. The influence of the operation type (as a pump and or as a turbine) and on the power delivered has been studied and the changes of the signatures presented. After the analysis of the vibration signatures the procedure used for the selection of spectral bands is explained.\ud \ud The analysis of the results obtained with the monitoring is shown. First the evolution of overall levels and the comparison with vibration Standards is discussed. Second the main types of damage found are introduced. Damage in the generator, in bearings, in supporting structure and abnormal operation with cavitation are shown. The changes in vibration signatures and spectral bands for these types of damage are also given. Finally the specific case of damage in runners is introduced.Postprint (author's final draft

Hydropower plays a key role in the actual energy market due to its fast response and regulation capacity. In that way, hydraulic turbines are increasingly demanded to work at off-design conditions, where complex flow patterns and cavitation appear, especially in Francis turbines. The draft tube cavitation surge is a hydraulic phenomenon that appears in Francis turbines below and above its Best Efficiency Point (BEP). It is a low frequency phenomenon consisting of a vortex rope in the runner outlet and draft tube, which can become unstable when its frequency coincides with a natural frequency of the hydraulic circuit. At this situation, the output power can significantly swing, endangering the electrical grid stability. This study is focused on the detection of these instabilities in Francis turbines and their relationship with the output power swings. To do so, extensive experimental tests for different operating conditions have been carried out in a large prototype Francis turbine (444 MW of rated power) within the frame of the European Project Hyperbole (FP7-ENERGY-2013-1). Several sensors have been installed in the hydraulic circuit (pressure sensors in the draft tube, spiral casing, and penstock), in the rotating and static structures (vibration sensors, proximity probes, and strain gauges in the runner and in the shaft), as well as in the electrical side (output power, intensity, and voltage). Moreover, a numerical Finite Element Method (FEM) has been also used to relate the hydraulic excitation with the output power swing.

To accurately determine the dynamic response of a structure is of relevant interest in many engineering applications. Particularly, it is of paramount importance to determine the Frequency Response Function (FRF) for structures subjected to dynamic loads in order to avoid resonance and fatigue problems that can drastically reduce their useful life. One challenging case is the experimental determination of the FRF of submerged and confined structures, such as hydraulic turbines, which are greatly affected by dynamic problems as reported in many cases in the past. The utilization of classical and calibrated exciters such as instrumented hammers or shakers to determine the FRF in such structures can be very complex due to the confinement of the structure and because their use can disturb the boundary conditions affecting the experimental results. For such cases, Piezoelectric Patches (PZTs), which are very light, thin and small, could be a very good option. Nevertheless, the main drawback of these exciters is that the calibration as dynamic force transducers (relationship voltage/force) has not been successfully obtained in the past. Therefore, in this paper, a method to accurately determine the FRF of submerged and confined structures by using PZTs is developed and validated. The method consists of experimentally determining some characteristic parameters that define the FRF, with an uncalibrated PZT exciting the structure. These parameters, which have been experimentally determined, are then introduced in a validated numerical model of the tested structure. In this way, the FRF of the structure can be estimated with good accuracy. With respect to previous studies, where only the natural frequencies and mode shapes were considered, this paper discuss and experimentally proves the best excitation characteristic to obtain also the damping ratios and proposes a procedure to fully determine the FRF. The method proposed here has been validated for the structure vibrating in air comparing the FRF experimentally obtained with a calibrated exciter (impact Hammer) and the FRF obtained with the described method. Finally, the same methodology has been applied for the structure submerged and close to a rigid wall, where it is extremely important to not modify the boundary conditions for an accurate determination of the FRF. As experimentally shown in this paper, in such cases, the use of PZTs combined with the proposed methodology gives much more accurate estimations of the FRF than other calibrated exciters typically used for the same purpose. Therefore, the validated methodology proposed in this paper can be used to obtain the FRF of a generic submerged and confined structure, without a previous calibration of the PZT.