[Tony Murtagh]

I own an old watermill in France. I am in the process of upgrading the old Francis turbine. I am thinking of installing a new Single Regulated Kaplan Turbine (variable wicket gate, fixed pitch runner (propeller)). …
I own an old watermill in France. I am in the process of upgrading the old Francis turbine. I am thinking of installing a new Single Regulated Kaplan Turbine (variable wicket gate, fixed pitch runner (propeller)).

Looking at the efficiency (hill) graphs for similar turbines it seems that there would be considerable gain in efficiency by operating the turbine at variable speed to accommodate the variable water flow and the variable head. Head is nominally 2.5 m (min 2.0 m, max 3.0m); water flow is up to 10 cubic meters per second.

Grid tied inverters (400 V, 50 Hz) are available to take the variable frequency and variable voltage AC generated by Wind Turbines. I am thinking of using a Permanent magnet Generator (PMG) directly connected to the turbine – no gears or belt drive, less loss, less noise, more stable turbine operation etc.

I have two main questions:

(a) are there links on the web to theoretical and empirical studies of the benefits of using variable speed generators for Single Regulated Kaplan turbines on small hydro projects?

(b) is it possible to obtain inverters that operate with hydro turbines?

To operate the turbine at the optimum speed for the desired water flow it must be necessary to vary the torque at the generator shaft. To vary the torque it must be necessary to vary the electrical load applied by the inverter. How is this done?

Is it possible to program the inverter to optimize the speed by continuously hunting for the optimum speed for maximum electrical output? Is this software algorithm available online?

Thank you in advance for any pointers.

Moulin De Aillevans (Latitude, Longitude) (47.586256, 6.431401)

Topic

[Hamid]

Generally there are some small or micro hydro elelectric system type as following: Off-Grid Battery-Based Microhydro-Electric Systems Most small off-grid hydro systems are battery-based. Battery systems have great flexibility and can be combined with other energy sources, such as wind generators and solar-electric arrays, if your stream is seasonal. Because stream flow is usually consistent, battery charging is as well, and it

[Tony Murtagh]

I have come across some variable frequency motor controllers that have regenerative braking. In regenerative braking mode they can act as variable torque inverters to connect to the electrical grid (400V, 50Hz). The challenge is programming the motor controllers to vary the torque on the generator and thus on the hydro turbine to optimize the power output. Does anyone have experience of programming a 200 kW motor controller in regenerative braking mode ? What is the best control algorithm ? I was thinking of continually changing the torque up and down very slightly to try to find the top of the power curve for a given water flow (wicket gate setting) through th hydro turbine. Does this correspond to the point of optimal turbin efficiency for a Kaplan turbine ?

[Hamid]

Your concerned subject is similar to wind turbine generator as you can see in following figure. An optimum wind power generation system with a cage-type machine and two-sided PWM voltage-fed converter is shown in figure below. The machine excitation is supplied by the PWM rectifier, where the excitation current ids maintains the flux constant. Currents ids and iqs are controlled by vector control within the speed control loop, and the speed is programmed with the wind velocity Vw to extract the maximum output power. This means that the optimum operating speeds are ?r1, ?r2, ?r3, and ?r4 for wind velocities Vw1, Vw2, Vw3, and Vw4, respectively, as shown in the figure. Of course, the wind velocity requires monitoring for the control. The line-side converter is responsible to maintain the dc link voltage Vd constant as shown. The line phase voltage waves va, vb, and vc are sensed, and the corresponding co-phasal line current commands ia*, ib*, ic* are generated by multiplying them by the output of the Vd control loop as shown. The phase currents are then controlled by HB PWM current control. When the turbine output power tends to increase the dc link voltage, the line currents tend to increase so that a balance is maintained between the line output power and turbine power.

[Tony Murtagh]

There are similarities with a wind turbine. The wind velocity is monitored and the torque and turbine speed is obtained from a previously defined look up table. I would like to use an adaptive algorithm for the hydro turbine. Perhaps every 5 minutes alter the torque and hence the turbine speed very slightly to see if the generated power increases or decreases. If the speed is optimum at the top of the efficiency curve the slight increase and decrease in speed should both cause a slight drop in output power. Otherwise the speed needs to be increased or decreased to achieve the optimum and the test performed again. In essence a finite differentiation is performed to determine the maximum. Has anyone experience of using such an algorithm with a variable speed hydro turbine ?

[Tony Murtagh]

Graph of Power versus Speed for a reaction turbine (Francis and Kaplan) It would appear that optimizing the electrical power generated for any particular gate opening (water flow) would also optimize the efficiency. If this is true it would greatly simplify the controls – no need to know the exact position of the gate opening, the water flow through the turbine or the head. The firmware in the inverter could simply periodically optimize the torque on the generator shaft to optimize electrical power generated. This may only be possible on a hydro turbine because of the relatively slow response time of the turbine and the slowly changing river conditions. A wind turbine must respond much more quickly to changes in wind speed and would not have time to optimize the torque. A predetermined lookup table of turbine performance would be used. Would such an optimizing scheme work for a Kaplan hydro turbine ? Has anyone got experience of optimizing the power from a variable speed hydro turbine ?

[Agostino Valentini]

tony I can give our references of the variable speed to hydro application: we manufacture both generators and static converters. I understood that your moulin is rated near 200 kW ok we did application with similar application, 300kW, 600kW with permanent magnet generator water cooled, driven by inverter and coupled to the national grid by an IGBT active front end converter. the “hill” curve is Q(m3/s) vs H(m), water flow versus head; you can try to find the best efficiency by variating one of them. The algoritm should be fixed by the turbine manufacturer, who knows the “hill” curve of its runner profile. You supplied a feedback of speed (or torque) to the inverter. The inverter “brakes” the generator in order to match the speed. The active front end convert to the grid the power produced at the nominal voltage (400V, 690V, MV…) The applications are with Pelton, with variable head (500-600 rpm), S-Kaplan variable pitch with variable head (180-230 rpm),. .. I remain agostino

[Tony Murtagh]

Thank you for the update Agostino. Getting an accurate efficiency graph (“Hill curve”) from a hydro turbine manufacturer is not easy. It may be necessary to determine the efficiency graph experimentally on site after the turbine is installed. This also allows for site variations such as the design of the Draft Tube for the water exit from the turbine. I would like, if possible, to have the inverter automatically adapt to the operating conditions, i.e. vary the torque on the generator and hence on the turbine to find the optimum operating turbine speed. For a fixed pitch Kaplan hydro turbine (propeller turbine) I believe that the point of maximum power production is very close to the point of maximum turbine efficiency – for a given gate opening. Is this true ? Has anyone used an inverter to vary the speed of a Kaplan turbine to determine this ?

[Tony Murtagh]

Some Motor Controllers can provide braking by means of Regenerative Braking instead of dissipating energy in a Braking Resistor. An inverter in the motor controller feeds electrical power back into the electrical grid. Has anyone got experience of programming a Motor Controller in regenerative braking mode ? I am particularly interested in varying the braking torque to vary the speed of the generator driven by the hydro turbine (Kaplan). Can anyone recommend a 200 kW motor controller with regenerative braking and a programmable front end to control the torque on the motor / generator ? Supplementary question: how do motor controllers with regenerative braking handle network failure while braking ? Do they have anti-islanding capabilities to protect network workers ? – or is external anti-islanding equipment required ? If so, can anyone recommend such equipment ?

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