Black & Ventech, Los Angeles, California
Colenco, Switzerland
*Presented in the Proceeding of the International Conferenct: on Hydropower, Water Power’95, Sun Francisco, California
The Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California has begun detailed design efforts on the Domenigoni Valley Reservoir (UVR) Project. The 9.87x108 m3 (800,000 acre-ft) DVR is an offslream water storage project boing developed to serve the various storage needs and provide a more reliable delivery of imported water to the 16 million people in MWD's 13,300 km2 (5,135 mi2) service area. A new pipeline planned for the future will be capable of delivering water to the reservoir by gravity. Initially, all water stored in the reservoir must be pumped from a nearby canal.
A maximum lift of about 48.8 m (278 ft) is required to pump water into the reservoir. During the initial filling period of 5 to 7 years, with the reservoir at extremely low elevations, pumping operations could result in gross heads of under 12.2 m (40 ft). Both the initial and future operating head ranges are too large for a single-speed unit; therefore, two-speed and variable-speed equipment were investigated.
To achi88eve complete capacity coverage over the entire head range, twelve variable-speed motors serviced by six large Load Commutated Inverters (LCI) were selected. The units are of the vertical turbine type pumps with the combined thrust/guide bearing on top of the motor.
