Last summer internationally renowned hydropower specialist Global Hydro Energy successfully completed its first project in the Finnish market.

Hydropower station Puhos in the south-eastern part of the country was completely refurbished and had its electrical equipment as well as its control and automation system brought up to current standards. Central to this project was the full revitalisation of an almost 50-year-old Kaplan turbine in a horizontal pit, which was designed for a design flow rate of 20 m³/s. Additionally, Global Hydro delivered a synchronous generator with direct turbine shaft coupling. Now that it is back in operation, the completely refurbished and updated machine combination achieves a bottleneck capacity of around 800 kW. This amounts to an increase in output power of more than 10 percent, with the head and design flow rate remaining unchanged.