Variable speed micro-hydro power plant: modelling, losses analysis, and experiment validation

Micro-hydro power has huge potential in the renewable energy section. This paper focuses on modelling, losses analysis, and experimental validation of the Micro-Hydro Power Generation System (MHPGS). An efficient practical 'hill charts' based 3-D model is generated, which provides a general philosophy on obtaining the mathematical model for different types of micro-hydraulic turbines. What is more, global losses of both variable speed and fixed speed operations are analysed, and then verified in a Power Hardware-In-the-Loop (PHIL) benchmark. Finally, experiments results have proved that the 3-D model based Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) performs efficiently, and the variable speed operation gains higher global efficiency compared with the fixed speed case, especially when the valve opening ratio is far from the optimised operation point.