www.potenciaindustrial.com.mx
POTENCIA INDUS TRIAL, S. A.
Av. Año de Juarez 205
Granjas San Antonio
Mexico City, D.F. 09070
+52 ( 55) 5686.7303
+52 ( 55) 5686.7246
sales@potenciaindustrial.com.mx
Established in 1958, Potencia Industrial ofers engineering and manufacturing of special
application high-efciency electrical motors, generators, M-G sets and power systems.
Foro ver thirty years we have dedicated to the advance of rotary electrical machinery
technologies, constantly setting new industry benchmarks. We provide creative
solutions that meet and exceed the toughest technical requirements while maintaining
the highest reliability and efciency.
Nearly 90% of our production was destined for the U.S. and Canada in the last 5 years;
we delivered equipment equivalent to 2,000 MW of wind power, 60 MW of hydroelectric
power and 100 MW of industrial electric capacity. Our state of the art hydrogenerators,
installed at several hydro sites around the world, are custom built, suitable for Pelton,
Francis or Kaplan turbines, vertical or horizontal, for high, low or variable speed.
Built to Spec
High Reliability
Low Maintanence
Very High Efciency
Life-Long Service
Up to 20 MW
Induction
Synchronous
Permanent Magnet
Generator Types:
Visit us at
HydroVision International 2017
Booth #1243
52 HYDRO REVIEW / June 2017 www.hydroworld.com
up the waterway is the frst priority. Equally
important, though, is the responsibility to
communicate with stakeholders in an honest
and open way, to explain how the incident
happened and the steps you have taken to
remediate it and to avoid such an event from
happening again in the future. Overall, the
response from an oil leak requires many hours,
external response teams, and interactions with
agency personnel to resolve.
For more than 125 years, our company
has been committed to protecting the environment, so when the 2009 incident occurred
we took swift action to report the leak to the
responsible agencies, clean up the spill, repair
the damaged transformer and enhance our
spill containment defenses to prevent such a
leak from happening again.
After the cleanup was completed, the
Avista engineers involved in the response,
including myself, began discussing whether
anything could be done to make the oil itself
less toxic. “What if we switched to an oil that
was nontoxic to native species and people?
What if we switched to an oil that was bio-
degradable, so that even in the unfortunate
event of a spill, it would pose no harm to the
environment or people?”
Even if it could be done, we knew that
fnding or developing an oil that ft these
requirements would in no way absolve us from
our responsibility to devote every efort to
prevent leaks from happening in the frst place.
Avista always strives to go above and beyond
the environmental laws and regulations and
to conduct business in a way that honors the
integrity of the natural resources in the areas
we serve. Our goal was to signifcantly reduce
the potential environmental consequences
from any future oil spill. Use of an environ-
mentally-friendly oil would not alter Avista’s
processes and protocols for responding to a
leak, but it could greatly change the impact
a leak could have on the waterway and sur-
rounding areas.
We considered transformer oil and realized
that the special dielectric properties would
present some challenges. It was at this time
that we discovered an opportunity to replace
petroleum-based oil in our hydro plants: the
governor systems.
Investigating the opportunity
Low-pressure hydraulic governor systems
— as well as other hydraulic systems in
hydropower plants — require a signifcant
quantity of oil: thousands of gallons, in some
cases. In this application, the oil is primarily
used for hydraulic power transmission and
lubrication, not for heat transfer or electrical
insulation. Te idea of replacing hundreds or
even thousands of gallons of petroleum-based
oil with biodegradable oil, with no loss in
plant performance or durability, had merit to
our engineers.
As we began this work, we knew Avista did
not have adequate research and development
personnel or facilities to move forward on our
own. We would need help. So we enlisted the
aid of Washington State University’s Applied
Sciences Laboratory ( WSU ASL) in Spokane
to research alternative hydraulic fuids that
would reduce the risk to the environment,
should an unplanned release of hydraulic fuid
occur in one of our hydroelectric stations.
Avista has long worked collaboratively with