TECHNICAL REPORT ON SENNAR HPP SET 2 STATOR WINDING

FAILURE

On the 8th of april 2018 a sever surge occuerd on the grid and
particulary at Sennar hydro power plant and that surge caused and over
voltage to generator no (2) which caused a failure on the stator winding
and the protection system oprated with signals of :
1- Differential protection
2- Over current
With too much smoke seen coming from the generator stator winding .
The unit was stopped and cheked and tested and the cables were
disconnected and some covers were removed. an insulation
measurement was done for all the phases with earth
With 5KV tester and both blue phase and red phase were found 0 k
ohm to earth.
And the conductos insulation was found very bad.
The electrical staff of the power station did their best to isolate the
defective coils and made partial repair . another measurement of
insulation resistance was done and that time it was found much better
than before .
Two attempts were done to operate unit (2) but both of them failed as
the first one, the unit tripped at 8KV , with tripped .
Indication of differential protection and the second one tripped of 11 KV
with an alarm of differential protection
Please refer to the electrical maintenance engineer report regarding
that matter and which was attached with this report
I asked the director of the Roseires and Sennar directorate to send
skilled staff from Roseires HPP so that a partial repair could be done .
My pevious staff arrived before me and the situation of the coils were
very bad. They told me that the coils were so bad that any attemped of
repair would be subject to failure .
I checked the windings under neath and found that most of the coils
were in voids , and the insulation was burnt out and the partial
discharge coating protection was melted and that meant the coils
would be like capacitors short circuited and it was the worst condition
and state of generator insulation.
Please refer to the photos of the defective coils attached with this
report.
So it was dicided not to do any further repair and asked the top
management to make new order of a project of complete rewinding of
the stator windings of both set (1) and (2) with new excitation system
and generator circuit breakers. Initially.
We will do our best to provide you with the requirements of the project
of complete re windings of stator windings with new lamination for both
set(1) and (2) .
It is worth mentioning that both units are consider on this project as uni
t( 1) is similar to unit( 2) and may be subject to failure at any time as
both of them are in the stage of aged component (wear out period)
according to the Bathtub Curve of the component life cycle reliability
and which is attached with this report
Best Regards

Best regards
Yours
Consultant engineer
Salih Ahmed Obeid
Technical Support Directorate Manager