Practical Reduction of Harmonics for Induction Generator with Simulator Mini Micro Hydro for Educational Purposes

Abstract

Micro Hydro Power Plant as one of the power generation that relies on waterfalls or river flows as the driving force. The generator produces harmonic voltage and current waves where these waves are a distorted wave disturbance causing multiplication in the fundamental frequency. This study aims to demonstrate practical and straightforward approaches to implement the appropriate filters in reducing harmonics in an induction generator for the micro hydropower. This approach could be useful for standalone rural/remote applications with a minimum competency of an electrical engineer to arranged the hydropower as well as for educational purposes at universities. Mini custom made micro-hydro simulator is employed. Two selected filters were chosen, i.e., Band Pass Filters and High Order Passive Filters as the harmonic dampers. The Bandpass filter able to reduce voltage harmonics without load, which is THDv 0.33% to 0.26% even though it is still far in the IEEE standard, i.e. 5%, and the bandpass filter does not affect while the system connected with the load. The high order passive filter can reduce the harmonic wave with THD 67 % becomes THDi 0.003% and THDv 0.40% to 0.17%. It was demonstrated that the applicability of this filter at the simulator could be employed to adjust the harmonics for the generated output of micro-hydro.