Design and Implementation of Hybrid Pico-Hydro – Photovoltaic (PV) Solar Power Plant in Massy-Gahuku LLG

Abstract

Hydro-Electricity and Solar Power are environmentally friendly renewable sources of energy that utilize the potential energy from dammed water and the sun respectively to generate electricity. In this paper is reported a new design and implementation of combining solar and hydro-electric power. The turbine and gearbox system used in this design is fabricated from scarp parts of used appliances. The hydro head of the Pico-Hydro plant commissioned was 5m which accumulated a hydraulic potency of the stream of about 5.886kW. The prime mover of the generator consisted of a modified crossflow turbine that is coupled with a gearbox to amplify the rpm of the system. A 500W synchronous generator was driven by the prime mover to generate raw phase shifted AC power. This raw power was rectified with a 25 A full wave rectifier and used in conjunction with 12 V 400 AH deep cycle battery bank system to supply power to a newly furnished double storey house. The generator output through the full wave rectifier is connected to a load controller for optimal charge efficiency. The load controller is connected to the battery bank through a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). The PLC activates a dummy resistive hot water element when the battery bank is fully charged. The Arduino GSM module monitors the entire process and automatically sends notification via a SIM interface to the system administrator notifying the system administrator of the on/off state of the heating element.