Turbine Pedestal

A turbine pedestal at Wangi Power Station sits on the main floor of the turbine hall, the heavy concrete plinth that once carried one of the six Parsons turbo-alternators. The pedestal rises to about waist height, set into the floor with deep foundations below, and is shaped to the footprint of the machine that sat on it. Anchor bolts protrude from the upper surface in regular patterns; the machine itself has been removed. The concrete is stained darker around the bolt positions where decades of operating oils worked into the surface. The turbine hall floor around the pedestal is open and empty, the light coming through high windows along both sides of the hall.

The six pedestals at Wangi each carried a three-cylinder tandem compound steam turbine supplied by C.A. Parsons & Co.: three 50 megawatt sets in A Station and three 60 megawatt sets in B Station. Each machine ran direct-drive at 3,000 RPM, synchronised to the 50 hertz NSW grid. The pedestals were designed to take the unbalanced loads and the vibration of full operation. After A Station retired on 7 March 1985 and B Station closed on 31 October 1986, the machines stayed in place for nearly a decade before generating equipment was removed between 1995 and 1997. The pedestals were too integral to the floor to extract. They remain.