Utilization of small conduit hydropower generation for domestic loads

Abstract

The growth in the world’s population has led to an increased energy demand. Today and in the near future, renewable energy should be widely implemented, to meet the growing demand for energy. In all various renewable energy technologies, hydropower generation is the most established. A portion of small hydropower generation can be obtained by recovering the energy within water supply systems.

Investing in water energy recovery is of utmost importance, considering the unsustainable use of water on the world level. Therefore, the process of energy recovery should be part of the water cycle. Many countries have begun with the development of this technology, although not much is exploited. The exploitation may contribute to the cost reduction of water supply systems, increasing feasibility.

The current study focused on developing a simulation tool that may be used for conduit hydropower generation. This will assist the conduit hydropower developers to quantify the available energy and evaluate the viability of the conduit hydropower projects. The main findings revealed that the developed model responded effectively under variable pressure. The system was solely active when excess pressure was available. This was due to the pressure difference between PRV pre-set pressure and the system pressure. When the inlet pressure was greater than that of the pressure setting at PRV, the energy recovery turbine utilized the pressure drop to drive the PMSG. Various output voltages and currents were obtained; the generator did not generate when the pressure drop was zero.

Further research is required to address the factors not covered by this work. This include: evaluation of various turbine and generator technology to validate the model as a universal conduit hydropower model, application of various configurations of the pipeline system and incorporating it to the simulation model and a thorough analysis of the physical losses in the pipeline, in order to accurately match the measured and simulated outputs.