Development of an Improved Dynamic Model of a Grid-Tied Micro-Hydro Power Plant

MOLINA, MARCELO GUSTAVO; MOMBELLO, ENRIQUE ESTEBAN; PACAS, JOSÉ MARIO

Mar del Plata

Congreso; Congreso Iberoamericano de Hidrógeno y Fuentes Sustentables de Energía: HYFUSEN 2011; 2011

Instituto de Energía y Desarrollo Sustentable - Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica

Conventional small-scale hydropower plants are run-of-the-river (ROR) stations that use a fixed speed drive with mechanical regulation of the turbine water flow rate in order to control the power harvested from the water. This design enables to reach high efficiency over a wide range of water flow rates but using a complex operating mechanism. This conventional arrangement is in consequence expensive and tends to be more affordable for large-scale grid-connected systems. In this paper, an enhanced configuration of a micro-hydro power plant (MHPP) is proposed, which is based on a smaller, lighter, more robust and more efficient higher-speed turbine. The suggested design is fairly simple and eliminates all the mechanical adjustments through a novel efficient electronic power conditioning system (PCS) for connecting to the power utility grid. The innovative topology employed consists of a three-level cascaded Z-source inverter that allows the flexible, efficient and reliable generation of high quality electric power from the MHPP at lower costs. Moreover, a full detailed model of the MHPP is derived and a three-level control scheme is designed. The dynamic performance of the designed architecture is verified by computer simulations.