WSRG Visit to Mt. Piper Power Station
The WSRG hosted a technical visit to Mt. Piper Power Station, located in Portland, NSW. The group consisted of 37 engineers, a mixture of young and old, with practicing engineers and undergraduate and postgraduate students. Most of the party travelled by coach from the front of the School of Engineering , University of Western Sydney, departing around 8am on Thursday, 29 September, 2011. The travel took some two hours, with the group arriving a short time before the commencement of the organized tour.
The Expo Centre housed many displays, some interactive which allowed time to pass before the tour started. The tour began with a short discussion between the group members and Leo Smith and Bob Roberts of Delta Electricity. There were many lively questions about the 660 MW, now uprated to 700 MW, power plant units until curtailed by the need to commence the walk around tour. The walk around included a roof top overview of the cooling tower, the ash dam, the water treatment plant, a closer look at the ball mills, the coal handling plant, the boiler exterior, the sootblowers, the control room for the two units and the generator transformer taking the 22kV from the generator to 330 kV for transmission, and lots and lots of stairs. A short break around 1pm occurred before the trip back to UWS campus, with a quick stopover at Lithgow. Overall the feedback was most positive, the group found the tour “interesting”, “fascinating” and “educational”. Certainly an eye opener if one had never been in such close contact with power plant.
Dr. G. Grodzicki
Treasurer, WSRG
