{"id":24426,"date":"2026-10-28T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/?p=24426"},"modified":"2026-10-28T07:49:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T11:49:47","slug":"niagara-falls-turbine-33-months-wicket-gates-680-ton-crane-12-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.autonocion.com\/us\/niagara-falls-turbine-33-months-wicket-gates-680-ton-crane-12-more\/","title":{"rendered":"A 2,600-megawatt power plant 4.5 miles below Niagara Falls took its first turbine apart down to the shafts and put it back together in 33 months, one of 13, and is bolting a 680-ton crane together on the plant floor to lift the other 12 out one at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve been to Niagara Falls, you’ve probably taken the boat ride, gotten soaked through a plastic poncho and gone home happy. What you probably didn’t do is keep driving 4.5 miles downstream to Lewiston, New York. That’s where the New York Power Authority (NYPA) has been turning Niagara River water into electricity since 1961.<\/p>\n

The Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant is a big building, even by power plant standards. NYPA puts the main structure at about 1,840 feet long, 580 feet wide and 384 feet tall. It took 11,700 workers to build it, and they dug out 12 million cubic yards of rock in three years.<\/p>\n

Inside are 13 turbine generators. NYPA is rebuilding every one of them.<\/p>\n

So how far along is it?<\/p>\n

One turbine is done. According to the Niagara Gazette, it’s Unit 6, and it went back online last December at the end of a 33-month replacement job. That’s almost three years for a single turbine, which sounds a bit absurd until you see how much of it got replaced.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
ACTIVE<\/div>\n
Turbines rebuilt<\/div>\n
1 of 13<\/div>\n
Unit 6, back online after a 33-month replacement job.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Gantry crane<\/div>\n
680 tons<\/div>\n
Replacing the plant’s original 630-ton crane. 70 feet tall, 60 feet wide.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
New generator stators<\/div>\n
5 \u00d7 36 ft<\/div>\n
215 MVA each, built on site over about 10 years.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Penstocks<\/div>\n
485 ft<\/div>\n
Long and 26 feet in diameter, carrying water from the forebay to the turbines.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

So what did NYPA swap out?<\/h2>\n

Most of it, according to NYPA’s announcement<\/a>. The list covers the wicket gates and the mechanisms that move them, the head cover, the turbine and generator shafts, the turbine guide bearings, and the relays, switches and electrical gear that tie everything together. Unit 6 also got a digital control system. NYPA says two units run on the new digital controls so far, and this is one of them.<\/p>\n

Despite sounding like something from a croquet set, a wicket gate is a pretty important piece of hydro hardware. Picture a ring of adjustable vanes wrapped around the turbine. They open and close a bit like the slats on a window blind, and that controls how much water gets to the runner (the bladed wheel that actually spins). The head cover is basically the lid that sits over the whole assembly.<\/p>\n

NYPA President and CEO Justin E. Driscoll described each unit as “a self-contained miniature power plant,” which is frankly a better description than I’d have come up with. The authority also says each one can power a city the size of Rochester. So “miniature” is doing some heavy lifting there.<\/p>\n

Water reaches those turbines through penstocks that are 485 feet long and 26 feet in diameter, and NYPA’s running inspections on those as part of the same program. If you’ve never seen a penstock, it’s basically a giant pipe. These ones are wide enough to drive a semi through.<\/p>\n

A 680-ton crane is replacing the original<\/h2>\n

To rebuild a turbine, you’ve got to take it apart and lift it out in pieces. At Robert Moses, that job falls to a gantry crane that runs on rails along the plant floor. The one NYPA has been using is original to the plant and rated at 630 tons, and the authority is replacing it with a 680-ton crane that’s being assembled on site.<\/p>\n

When NYPA picked REEL COH, a company based in Boisbriand, Quebec, to build that crane, it put the contract at up to about $38 million over five years. According to the original crane announcement<\/a>, the new one stands 70 feet tall and 60 feet wide, and its job is lifting rotors and other major components. NYPA called the old crane the workhorse behind every mechanical upgrade at the plant, which makes sense. If the crane is down, every turbine job waits.<\/p>\n

An extra 50 tons of capacity might sound like a modest bump. But I’d argue the crane is the most important piece of hardware in this entire program, even if it’s the least exciting one to look at. NYPA’s 2022 plan had it finished by 2026, and the authority’s latest update still describes it as being assembled. I couldn’t find anything public confirming it’s done yet.<\/p>\n

We’ve seen the same kind of heavy-lift juggling on the Cumberland River, where a 500,000-pound rotor at Barkley Dam<\/a> has to swing over three generators that are still making power. What I can’t tell you is how much a single Robert Moses turbine weighs. NYPA hasn’t published that figure, and neither has the company building the new stators. The best yardstick we’ve got is the crane itself, which presumably means no single piece it has to pick up tops 680 tons.<\/p>\n

So why build the stators on site?<\/h2>\n

The next big job belongs to Andritz, an Austrian hydropower equipment company that NYPA picked through an open competitive process. According to Andritz’s contract announcement<\/a>, it’ll design and build five new generator stators for Robert Moses, each rated at 215 MVA and about 36 feet across.<\/p>\n

If you’re not a generator nerd, the stator is the stationary ring on the outside of the generator. The rotor spins inside it, and the magnetic field sweeping past the stator’s copper windings is what actually produces the electricity. MVA is the rating engineers use for generators, and for our purposes it lands in the same neighborhood as megawatts.<\/p>\n

Andritz says it’ll build all five at the plant. It hasn’t said why, but I’d guess the answer is pretty simple. A 36-foot ring isn’t something you strap to a flatbed and haul up the Thruway. Andritz also hasn’t said which five of the 13 units get the new stators.<\/p>\n

The stator work is supposed to take about 10 years. Andritz is also working on stator upgrades at the nearby Lewiston Pump Generating Plant under a separate contract with NYPA. That’s the other half of the Niagara Power Project, and it’s basically a giant water battery. It pumps water uphill into a reservoir when demand is low and lets it run back down through the same machines when demand picks up.<\/p>\n

Between the two plants, NYPA says the project can put out up to 2,600 megawatts, while Andritz puts the combined figure at 2,675 megawatts. Either way, Andritz says it’s the largest hydropower facility in New York State and the third largest in the US.<\/p>\n

NYPA wants the rest done faster<\/h2>\n

So how long until all 13 turbines are finished? According to the Niagara Gazette, NYPA plans to rebuild the remaining units one at a time, and it wants to get each job down to 18 months once its supply chain is in place. That would cut the Unit 6 time nearly in half, and it seems like a pretty ambitious target for a machine that has to come apart down to the shafts.<\/p>\n

Jairo Flores, NYPA’s regional manager for Western New York, told the paper the authority can keep a turbine out of service for nearly three years without missing its energy commitments. NYPA normally plans around one or two units being down at once. Which means its customers shouldn’t notice any of this, at least in theory.<\/p>\n

Now do the math on 12 turbines at 18 months apiece, back to back. You get 18 years. That’s longer than the whole program, so it’s safe to assume some of those overhauls are going to overlap.<\/p>\n

NYPA launched Next Generation Niagara in July 2019 as a 15-year, $1.1 billion program, which puts the finish line in 2034. Andritz’s stator contract, announced on April 2, runs about 10 years on its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve been to Niagara Falls, you’ve probably taken the boat ride, gotten soaked through a plastic poncho and gone … <\/p>\n

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