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Oahe Dam Case Study

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Summary Written By: Bradley Penney
Tour Site: Oahe Dam
Date: 8/10/15
Time: 9:30
Location: North of Pierre, SD
Tour Guide: Kris Cleveland

The Oahe Dam was constructed to provide flood control, electric power and irrigation benefits along the Missouri River in central South Dakota. Tour guide, Kris Cleveland, made it very clear that the number one priority of the dam was to control water levels on the Missouri River, with an additional benefit being the generation of electricity for much of the north-central United States. The dam opened in 1962 and was upgraded in the 1980’s to a higher capacity.

The dam consists of seven turbines, each of which have 118 MVA and 112 MW capacity. The damn boasts a 95% efficiency rating …show more content…

Figure 1 displays the switchyard as viewed from the back side of the dam. The first of the seven turbines was connected to a three phase transformer and was stepped up from 13.8 kV to 115 kV. This transformer was then connected to the switchyard for transmission. The last 6 turbines were paired in twos and a single phase transformer was used to step up the voltages of the energy produced on these turbines. Each pair was connected by a bus into a delta configuration, and then two wires had to be connected to each single phase transformer in order to step up each phase individually. The single phase transformers were stepping the voltage up to 230 kV for …show more content…

Additionally, he noted that the power could be adjusted within minutes if they were to do it manually. In order to meet these demands, the turbines, as long as they are operational, are always spinning. Water is always flowing through the gates if the turbines are running and they can either be online and producing or in condensed mode. The only bad side of this is that the turbines always spinning reduces the life span of some of the turbines due to increased wear on the turbines. This was evident because turbine four was currently offline during the tour for

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