February, 2021

Effects of earthquake on power plant operability

In March 2020 the city of Zagreb was hit by the largest earthquake in the last 140 years, while a much stronger earthquake (6.3M) hit the nearby town of Petrinja in December 2020.

In the aftermath, we all got increasingly aware of the effects of earthquakes, subsequent tremors and vibrations.

As vibration experts and creators of CoDiS condition monitoring system, we began to take interest in how our vibration sensors and monitoring instruments registered earthquakes and what effects they might have on the monitored hydro generators. We managed to record the earthquake on frequencies from 1.5-4.5 Hz, depending on which wave type was dominant. In powerplants closer to epicentre, CoDiS triggered an event due to increased bearing vibration, while Earthquake was even registered in powerplants up to 120km from epicentre.