Ensuring the safe operation of hydropower stations is one of the key challenges for electric generation. Clearly the safe operation of such systems can only be archived with proper and effective maintenance scheduling. The objective of this study is to analyze, rank and prioritize the risk factors responsible for equipment failures of a hydraulic turbine generator unit (HTGU) based on operating data and expert elicitation. Here a simple qualitative risk evaluation model is proposed able to consider seven typical failures in HTGU. The proposed tool is applied for the risk prioritization of equipment failures, e.g. shaft torsion, misalignment, rotating fault, axis bend, runner fault, water guide, and wicket gate of a hydropower station in China. The obtained results have been compared against the actual statistics of equipment failures of a hydropower station in China, considered showing good agreement. All of these results provide theoretical guidance for digitalization realization of equipment failures.