ROV Underwater Inspection of Long Tunnels for Snowy Hydro
Hibbard Inshore Sabertooth at Tunnel Intake In today’s hydroelectric market, production planners and operations managers are asking the same questions: “How can we minimize outage times?” and “How much can we safely continue to generate while completing inspection and maintenance tasks?” Demand and risk are two large issues that need to be closely considered each […]
Robotic Underwater Tunnel Repair: Rock Trap Debris Removal and Trash Rack Replacement
A Hydro Electric Plant was faced with debris entering the turbines causing damage. The trash rack at the intake had failed and several miles down the tunnel, there was rock catcher, inline trash rack and surge shaft. This project was the result of the earlier inspection project detailed separately in the Hibbard Inshore website Project Gallery.
ROV and Divers Working Together
Hibbard Inshore provides a wide range of ROV services. Often the optimum solution for a task is to have divers and ROVs work together, and because of this Hibbard Inshore has performed many projects in conjunction with divers. ROVs have the advantage over divers in terms of nearly unlimited bottom time, lower risk and almost no depth limitation. Divers offer a higher degree of flexibility with tooling and manual tasks.
Potable Water Transmission Line Inspections
Hibbard Inshore was contracted through a major engineering firm to inspect over 36,000’ of potable water transmission lines. The lines were to be inspected in a dry state to look for signs of wear and damage including cracking, offsets, holes or points of infiltration.
Hibbard Inshore was contracted to perform several structural inspections at two hydroelectric power plants in order to accurately define the conditions of a surge shaft, a rock trap, a trash rack and two penstocks.
Condition inspections at Multiple Dams
Hibbard Inshore was contracted to perform deep water inspections at 5 separate dams in the same region for a single owner over the course of 7 days. Hibbard used one of their Navajo (Link) swimming remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) with lights, dual sonar units and video cameras for the inspections.
ROV Cleaning of an Aqueduct Sump and Pouring of a Concrete Plug to Abandon a Shaft
A large city in the United States wanted to abandon a historical dewatering shaft adjacent to a shaft in one of their main aqueduct lines. The dewatering shaft communicated with the aqueduct shaft via a valve near the bottom of the sump portion of the aqueduct shaft, and the valve had ceased to operate over time.
ROV Controlled Unmanned Dredging Adjacent to Active Intakes
Hibbard inshore performed an underwater survey and unmanned dredging project in front of units at a major pumping plant. The plant was due to change out each of its pumping units in favor of newer, more efficient models. In order to do this, when the existing units were removed, large amounts of silt and sedimentation from the canal would deposit in the intake area as well as the area where the new unit was to be installed.
Nuclear Power Plant Cooling Water Intake Inspection
A nuclear power plant identified a potential issue with a partial blockage in one of its cooling water intakes as it was not able to draw the volume of water that was expected. After trying several methods to locate the potential blockage without placing anything into the line, the customer determined that the best method for ultimately identifying a blockage and characterizing it for remediation would be to perform an internal inspection of the line with an ROV.
Offshore Sensor Placement and Retrieval
This job was completed for a customer in the Scientific Research Industry and involved the location and retrieval of subsea sensor pods. These pods were in several hundred feet of water and had an issue where the attached acoustic buoy systems would not release and surface to allow retrieval.