1,689 Comments for Eagle River Power Station

Circulator pump for corcualting cooling water thru the condenser.

CONDENSER ! 40 + years around power plants, I know a condenser when I see one. The water box cover has been removed. What is seen is thousands of tubes thru which the circulating water passes to cool/condense the steam. Bolts sticking out are staybolts to hold the end head of the water box (or more correctly, keep it from bulging out from pressure of circulating water).

End view of a condenser with the water box removed. You are seeing the tube sheet . There will be thousnads of small-diameter tubes rolled into that sheet to provide a passage for the circulating water. The bolts sticking out of the sheet are staybolts to secure the waterbox to the sheet and end flange of the condenser shell.

Circulating water pipe for the condensers. It was painted with a non-sweat insulating coating. Circulating water piping, carrying cooler water from a river or bay would "sweat" in the higher heat/humidity inside a power plant.

Water box end of a steam surface condenser. Not at all big by standards of even 40 years ago.

exciters make DC current to magnetize the field of the AC generator. What you are seeing is the commutator and brushes of the exciter. 3 phase = AC current. Exciter produces DC current, so no phases.

Commutator is a series of copper bars (gone greenish with corrosion in photo) that are on the end of the exciter armature. Brushes are carbon blocks that pick up current from the commutator bars while the armature is turning.

What you are seeing is circulating water pumps flanking the 'water box" end of a condenser. Cool water (from a river or bay) was circulated thru the tubes of the condensers to cool/condense the exhaust steam back to water/condensate.

You are seeing the condenser under the turbine. The steam was exhausted from the turbines into condensers, which ran under partial vaccum. Exhaust steam was condensed back to water (called condensate), and was fed back into the boilers to make more steam. The condensers had thousands of tubes. Steam passed thru the shell of the condenser around the outsides of the tubes, water was circulated thru the tubes to provide the cooling. Bottom of the conser is called the hotwell, condensate pumps should sit a bit below the level of the hotwell.

These turbines and generators are VERY little guys by standards of even 40 years ago.

I erected enough steam turbines and worked in power plants, so this is stuff I 've known in my sleep for the past 40-odd years.

Push Jerk, new PR @ 210×2.30 C&J @ 155: 7:02.56Just got my new tri bike, so I’ve been busy panyilg with that. Will get back to the full endurance wods next week.joey

On 2:30 means you have 2 mnetuis and 30 seconds to swim the 100 yards and rest before going on the next repeat. If 2:30 does not give you enough time for the 100 yards and rest for the next interval then scale the distance back. Answers to questions such as this are in the FAQ.

Ahh, my mistake, of course they're like huge *inductances*, not capacitors, and consequently, it's not "RC-low pass" but "LR-low pass"... my bad.
An inductance generates a magnetic field and as long it's not established, current drops there which leads to the desired effect of blocking spikes, as an increase in current can only pass when the magnetic field is increased which takes more time than a "spike" should last. Once the field is established, no current is dropped at the inductance (save the voltage drop due to the wiring of the coils unwantedly acting as a resistor to some point).
And yes - stupid of me as well not to think of it - those coils are most definitely copper, and plenty of it ;-) ...would've been one of the first thing to be scrapped.

I believe this was in the area as shown in the next and previous photos, where there were those tall doors and empty rooms. If the coils had copper or other precious metal, they would probably have been sold or scrapped.

the "o with a line through it" is actually the small Greek letter Phi (so Richard Davis was right somehow since the Cyrillic and the Greek alphabet have some common letters) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phi which is commonly used as symbol for the phase of any non-DC current (well, DC has no phase, of course..) in electrical engineering and signal processing.

About the power factor/fault current limitation thing:
Line reactors have - afaik - nothing to do with the power factor, the power factor cos(phi) describes how much power e.g. an electric motor uses to spin in comparison to how much is lost (the so-called reactive load, in German we call it "Blindlast" which is imho a nice semi-metaphoric term) into shifting the electromagnetic fields which are generated inside a running motor. This energy is not actually used, but it has to be transported via the power lines anyways. Those power lines act as big resistors, and as any other resistor it draws current.
Now there's no way to "limit" this effect; the power factor is something specific to the machinery you use, it's specified as "cos(phi)" on the type plates of motors and other heavy-duty machinery.
You can't do anthing against reactive load (well, use other machines..) but you can measure it, and at least in Austria I know they do bill factories and other heavy-duty users seperately for it.

Line reactors are like huge capacitors (coils) to limit current spikes (and possibly frequency irregularities/spikes somewhat like an RC low-pass filter I could imagine). (@Motts: was there something like lage coils, somewhat transformer-like looking around?) But I am not sure if they are really are for limiting *fault* current, I would've thought they usually attenuate the spikes occuring when a generator is put on or off the grid. But then again, we didn't learn much about power engineering, more signal processing and stuff - and I suck at explaining, and even more so if it's something we were tought in German. So, sorry if I pissed anyone off who knows that stuff better than me. ;-)

@reddll: you mean Metropolis (1927) http://en.wikipedia.or...ki/Metropolis_(film)
This movie crossed my mind as well already ;-)
MOLOCH! (if you don't know what I mean, go, watch the movie, I think there's a version with English subs out there as well (the original text is German) however, I like the dream-scene about the 7 deadly sins and the grim reaper way better "Der Tod ist über der Stadt -- !") But I digress... anyhow, a movie worth having seen I'd say. :-)

this place is truly amazing, I've been documenting it for the past year or so for a project I'm working on. it's cool to see what it looked like a few years back, it's experienced quite a bit of deterioration since these shots were taken. great site man!