North America | In 2010, the Walla Walla District awarded a contract
to Voith Hydro to design and supply one fixed blade turbine and two adjustable blade turbines at Ice Harbor. In 2016, a contract was awarded to Voith Hydro to install the three new turbines. The first of the three new turbines, a fixed blade, was installed in the Ice Harbor powerhouse on June 8, 2018. This turbine runner was the first of its kind, designed by USACE personnel and Voith Hydro for power efficiency and to optimize the safety of fish navigating through Snake River dams. Meanwhile in 2018, the Walla Walla District awarded a $321.3 million contract to Alstom Renewable US LLC, a General Electric Company, to design, manufacture and install 14 turbines at the McNary Lock and Dam, near Umatilla, Oregon. The 14 main unit turbines have been in operation for more than 62 years. They are projected to continue to operate on average for another seven years until the new turbines are manufactured and installed.
Looking to the future This summer, Ice Harbor Unit 3 will be completed and
Above: Schematic of the turbine system
j designs for the Ice Harbor turbines. The effort also involved the Bonneville Power Administration’s economic expertise, and NOAA Fisheries’ knowledge of anadromous fish biology. And all of this is in addition to biologists, engineers, construction teams and contracting experts within both the Walla Walla and Portland districts of USACE. Decades of research, development and
Acknowledgement Report By Hannah Mitchell, Walla Walla district, US Army Corps of Engineers
collaboration have gone into the design of the new turbines.
Below: Ice Harbor Lock and Dam, located on the lower Snake River near Pasco, Washington, was the first of the Lower Snake River Dams to be constructed. The first three of its hydro-turbine units were brought online in 1961, with three additional units coming online in 1976
“Ice Harbor and the other three other dams on the lower Snake River provide low-cost, carbon-free energy to the Pacific Northwest, and they played a major role in keeping the lights on during the winter storms of February 2021 and the heat dome event we experienced last June,” said Bill Leady, acting vice president for Generation and Asset Management at the Bonneville Power Administration. “Modernizing the equipment will benefit fish and Pacific Northwest residents well into the future.”
The history of the turbines Ice Harbor Lock and Dam, located on the lower Snake
River near Pasco, Washington, was the first of the lower Snake River dams to be constructed. The first three of its hydro-turbine units were brought online in 1961, with three additional units coming online in 1976.
functional. At that time, work on the third unit, Unit 1, will be able to begin. Unit 1 will also be an adjustable blade turbine. Biological testing for Unit 3 is scheduled for early
October. This will include Sensor Fish tests, as well as balloon-tag fish testing, where juvenile salmonids are released through the turbine unit and then evaluated for injury and survival. And work is already well underway to design new turbines for McNary. “We’re nearing the completion of our hydraulic design of the first adjustable blade runner of McNary. We’ll be starting that final iteration for the adjustable blade in April. So, in just a few weeks we’ll be starting the final design iteration for the adjustable blade runner. That will take us about a year, and then we’ll start the design of the fixed blade runner,” Ahmann said.
It is estimated that replacing all 14 turbines at McNary will take the next 10 to 15 years. Meanwhile, Portland District is moving forward with their own project: replacing the turbine units at John Day Lock and Dam, which was completed in 1971 and has a powerhouse with 16 turbine units. All of these efforts are steadily reshaping and modernizing hydropower in the Pacific Northwest to be more efficient and safer for fish. ●
16 | June 2022 |
www.waterpowermagazine.com
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