Many Norwegian hydro power plants have complex lay-out with several reservoirs, broke intakes, surge shafts and even air cushion chambers. There are kilometers of excavated tunnels as well as long tail water systems. The stations are often equipped by multiple of turbines, both in series and parallel. A number of operation modes are therefore possible. Doing transient simulations and simulations of governor stability in the design phase, the problem is to find the worst case scenario regarding these operating modes. Svartisen power plant has been of particular interest these days. The power plant is originally designed for two 350 MW Francis turbines, however, only one turbine was installed. When designed, governor stability was regarded as problematic due to the long penstock. A long penstock will give a too high time constant for the hydraulic inertia. The main problem here is, however, the water hammer frequency that interferes with the governor performance. The frequency is in the same range as the cross frequency. Therefore the governor will react on these water hammer waves, which in its nature is notoriously unstable. The common solution is to build an air cushion and thereby increase the water hammer frequency above the cross frequency. The expenses were, however, deemed too high, and it was necessary to seek for other solutions. A pressure feedback on the governor was introduced in order to have stable operation at least for two turbines. With only one turbine installed, the pressure feedback has not been activated because, based on the simulations, it was regarded unnecessary. Even if the original simulations shows good stability margins when only one turbine is running, there has been some indications that the aggregate has suffered from instability. In 2004 Svartisen Power Plant was equipped with a comprehensive monitoring system. Both the turbine and the generator performance have been observed. This gives valuable information on how the hydropower plant has performed during start ups, close downs and steady state operation. The data has for instance been used to verify the simulations of governor stability of the excising turbine.This will also secure the simulations done with an additional turbine installed.