The Dam Big Work

How working at a dam gave me a new-found appreciation for the work I do.

During my week of retirement, I spent a day helping my friend at his hydroelectric dam.

Yes, that’s correct, my friend runs a hydroelectric dam. That’s a job somebody can have in 2024, fortunately. Not everyone has been sequestered to a desk job that consists of back-to-back Zoom calls. My friend is out there doing the big work and it was awesome to shadow him.

Whenever I get together with my friend, let’s call him Dave, I always want to learn about the dam. He’s usually working on some cool engineering project. I’m infinitely fascinated with people who do cool jobs. Lately, Dave has been dealing with several challenges at his dam due to its age. The dam was built in 1911 and is still reliably producing electricity. His dam has four turbines and three are out of operation.

When I arrived that Friday morning, I figured we’d be going over the electrical data, working on some small projects, and shooting the breeze. While my friend was giving me a tour, he noticed that one of the water-fed bearings was low on pressure. He checked a valve and seemed concerned. He did some more tests and deduced that the outside turbine shaft bearing wasn’t getting lubricated. Not good considering the shaft rotates at around 150 RPM, 24/7.

We went through the turbine shut-down procedure in order to troubleshoot the issue. I went into this day knowing only the very basics of how a hydroelectric dam works. We moved from the bowels of the dam to top in order to stop the water flow into the fourth turbine. The process involved moving a giant boom lift across the top and into position to actuate two giant plugs. Once the plugs were in place, the water started to drop beneath our feet until a 30 foot pit was revealed with a small waterfall.

I asked Dave if he had to go down while water was still pouring in and he replied in the affirmative. He invited me to join him but I declined due to the 30-foot decent on slippery metal rungs that have been there since before the Titanic. I watched him disappear down the hole and beneath the waterfall where he worked for 10 minutes before coming back up.

Dave told me that the bearing’s water feed hose had split and that he’d have to replace it and build a new coupling device. From here we got to work going through parts and looking for anything that could do the job. I wasn’t much use so I decided to build a fire by the river in order to cook our lunch. We enjoyed our fire-cooked food on the edge of the river basking in the sun while discussing the problem at hand.

After lunch we got back to work with the installation of the new hose and coupling device. Dave went back down into the pit, installed the new fixture to the bearing and ascended the rungs. We pulled the two plugs that blocked the flow and watched the water fill up the pit below us where Dave had been working. 

They all float down here.

Now that we had flow and pressure going to the propeller, it was time to turn on the generator. Dave walked me through the startup procedure. I had to slowly apply flow, which added torque to the turbine shaft to generate electricity. I slowly added flow until I was matching the electrical grid’s frequency and wattage. Once the output matched the grid, I locked the settings into place and let the generator run.

Dave went to check on the outside bearing’s water pressure gauge and didn’t see much change from before. We let the turbine run for a bit longer before checking the pressure again and it was close to zero. Something had broken again so we had to shut the generator down. I could tell Dave was frustrated because he had spent most of the day doing the repair. What’s worse is that all of his generators were down so the dam was producing no electricity. 

We met in the office and went over the plan to fix the water bearing’s feed. Basically, Dave will have to reinforce the water line with a new structure made from cement and steel that can withstand the immense pressure. Dave told me that he’ll be lucky if he can get it built within a week. I felt awful for him because that meant he wasn’t producing any electricity for a week.

As the day wound down we talked about Dave’s future plans for the dam and what an optimal state would look like. Obviously, he has a substantial amount of work to get there but I’m confident he’ll make it happen. 

Spending the day with him gave me more appreciation for people who work in physical industries. The work Dave does is not easy and is especially dangerous. One small misstep could result in disaster and even then nothing is guaranteed to fix the problem at hand. I envied his job in many ways though. For starters, he was alone all day out on a beautiful river. The sound of the water falling off of the spillway and the cool mist it created were pleasant. I felt like you could get lots of thinking done at a hydroelectric dam. I loved that we could casually cook our lunch over a fire by the river.

I also gained an appreciation for what I do. No, I’m not surrounded by nature every day. I’m in front of screens most of the day speaking with other people and working on technical challenges. But when I’m not doing my work, I especially enjoy nature. My friend admitted that he’s jaded with being at the dam and rarely takes time to soak up the location. That makes sense since it’s his job and we often don’t find our work environment to be relaxing.

I’ve been at my new job for over a week now and I’m happy with my choice. I enjoyed my brief retirement. I wish it could have been more but either way, I gained new a perspective that has helped me appreciate where I am even more.