Governing System

Governor is a heart component of the turbine which

controls it during steady state and transient conditions.
The governor does this function by controlling the
steam flow through the turbine by adjusting the control
value.
The governor is a control component with advanced
protections for the turbine which ensure safe operation
of the turbine.
Governing system of the turbine does the following
functions:
Controls the turbine speed during start-up or in no load
condition to permit the unit to be synchronized with the grid.
Controls the turbine load when running in parallel with the
grid/generating sets.
All protective functions to ensure the safe operation of the
unit.
 Methods of governing
Depending the final control
component of governing system
these are divided as
(1) nozzle governing and
(2) throttle governing.
 Nozzle Governing
This type of governing is suitable for simple
impulse turbine and most efficiently in part load
conditions.
In this method the steam flow is regulated by
opening or closing some set of nozzles of the
turbine.
These nozzles are actuated by independent
control mechanisms.
Depending upon the load demand some no of
nozzles will be put in service and some put in
out of service.
This feature enables the use of nozzle
governing for part load operation efficiently.
Nozzle Governing mechnism of steam turbine
 For example if the turbine consists of 10 nozzles
for full power(100 %).
If the load demand has reduced to 60 % then out
of 10 nozzles, 4 nozzles can be closed to provide
60% load with out delay.
This gives the advantage on throttle governing
where the power reduction will happen gradually.
In nozzle governing method, there will not be
any importance to the steam inlet pressure and
it is done by the boiler and bypass pressure
control system.
So the use of nozzle governing is limited to
small turbines.
 Throttle governing
In this case of governing mechanism, the mass
flow rate is controlled by throttling the steam
by means of control value.
The control value position will be adjusted to
allow the required steam for turbine operation.
Here the controlling parameter can be turbine
speed and load.
With latest technologies steam generator
pressure control is also incorporated in
governing control system.
This is more important in nuclear power plants
where constant steam pressure is essential for
efficient operation.
Throttling sleeve governor of steam turbine
 For example if the plant is operating at full
power and it needs to be operated at 60 %
according to the load demand.
Then the controller checks the demand with
the existing load gives a adjustment signal to
control valve.
The control valve will slowly throttle to reduce
the steam flow for acquiring the load demand.
Due to throttling of control values there will be
high energy loss across the control values.
Hence the design of value should be adequate
to withstand the pressure of the steam.