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Hydro Power!

     
 

Grade 3 -6 have been working on a unit of inquiry titled 'Choice for Tomorrow'. The central idea is that there are many sources of energy. Some of them are renewable, some of them are not.

  

It is an inquiry into:

  • the different sources of energy (solar, kinetic, fossil, nuclear, hydroelectric etc)

  • how we can use energy sources more wisely

  • the impact our use today will have on future generations, and whose responsibility this is

  
 

As part of this unit of inquiry we visited Pangani Falls Hydro Electric Power Station.  
Grade 5 student Nina Schoonman wrote the report below.  

Pangani Falls Hydro Electric Power Station

On the 15th of September 2005 Grade 3-8 went on a field trip to see the Pangani Falls Hydro Electric Power Station. When we arrived at our first destination we stopped and had a snack. After having some food we lined up and prepared ourselves for the tour.

The first place we visited was the dam. The dam is the beginning of the long process of making hydro electric power. Our guide explained a couple of things to us. One was that the water inside the dam was filtered so that it would go smoothly through the process. He also told us that the water in the dam was approximately eight meters deep.

Attached to the dam was a penstock and though we didn’t manage to see it our guide told us it was about 350 meters long! The penstock is a long tube used to transport the water from the dam to the turbines. The turbines were something we would be seeing later.

Our guide told us that we would be descending about 160 meters from the dam to the Power Station. So after driving down a short road, which was quite steep, we arrived at the main destination of our trip, the Pangani Falls Hydro Electric Power Station.

Through the gates we saw the road disappearing into the cavity which surrounds the Power Station. All the cameras we had among us were taken from us because no one had permission to take pictures and the power station staff didn’t take any risks.

Then we were ready to go; the guards let us through and we drove into the tunnel. The whole construction was hacked right out of the rock. I was astounded to learn that we were about one kilometer underground. Everything was very well organized and I thought everything looked quite nice. Most of us thought that it looked like a spy hide-out or something similar to it.

One of the first things we were shown was were the two turbines. One of the turbines was off, thanks to the lack of water, but the other one was spinning at a good speed and making a sound which was tremendously loud. All we saw was the shaft but only this was more than enough to indicate the stupendous speed at which the hidden turbine must be spinning.

The shaft connects the turbine to the generator. The generator is made up of the stator and the rotor. The shaft is attached to the rotor. The rotor is a couple of magnets that rotate whereas the stator is made of coils of copper wire. The electricity is produced when the rotor spins past the stator.

By Nina Schoonman G5

 

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