Hydraulic Design Challenges of High Head 880 MW Gouvães Pumped-Storage Power Plant

Abstract

The 880 MW pumped-storage power plant of Gouvães, which is part of the Alto Tâmega hydro power scheme from Iberdrola is currently under construction in the north of Portugal. The power plant is equipped with 4 reversible Francis pump-turbines with a gross head of 660 m. The power plant features several challenges with respect to the hydraulic design such as: i) ultra-high-head single stage reversible Francis pump-turbine of very low specific speed leading to severe hydraulic transients, ii) a long high-pressure penstock, iii) an headrace differential surge tank linked to a 4700 meters long headrace tunnel and iv) a complex tailrace differential surge tank linked to a 700 meters long tailrace tunnel. To perform the hydraulic design of the pumped-storage power plant, a stepwise approach presented in the paper was undertaken by Iberdrola. A detailed 1D hydraulic transient analysis was performed to optimize the headrace and tailrace surge tank dimensions. Then a combined CFD and reduced scale physical transient tests of both surge tanks was conducted. This enabled to address the complex 3D flow physics that develop in surge tanks but are not captured by 1D transient simulations such as free surface, upsurges against walls, verification of throttle singular head losses and effects not captured by 3D CFD such as air-water mixture and detection of air entrainment risk.