Study of the use of a micro hydro in knockdown container completed with a cylindrical form housing of francis hydraulic turbine to support the development program of energy self-sustainability for remote and isolated areas in Indonesia

Abstract

With an intention to reduce the consumption of energy from fossil fuels and the CO2 emission in relation with the climate change solution, Indonesian Government has targeted that the role of the New and Renewable Energy (NRE) resources reaches at least 23% , or about 27 GW , in 2025 and it is expected to increase to the extent of about 134 GW in 2050 within the scenario of mixed energy supply. Geographically Indonesia has many remote and isolated areas with lack of appropriate infrastructure supports. But in the most of the areas, huge potential of new and renewable energy are available such as hydro energy is about 75 GW, biomass energy is about 32 GW and bio fuel is about 32 GW. The total utilization of the energy from small hydro energy up to this year for example is only about 300 MW. The significant obstacle in optimizing the utilization of small hydro energy in the areas is mainly on the infrastructure conditions and the local manufacture capabilities. Difficulties in mobilization of experts, skill worker , parts and constructions material result in very time consuming and costly for site construction.In this research a hydro turbine built in knock down container completed with a Francis turbine in cylindrical form housing is proposed and reported its performance on implementation. The hydro in a knock down container concept comes from the idea to manufacture hydro power solutions in a knock down container, readymade to be transported to installation sites. It can be easily manufactured in a quality controlled and cost effective environment, transported and installed in remote areas, to operate and maintain with minimal amount of equipment.It shows that the implementation of the unit in a remote area has reduced the total site construction time by 1/3 compared to the predicted one with conventional unit. The performance of the Francis turbine with cylindrical form housing has shown comparable with the conventional one which has volute form housing. The superiority was even more pronounced by introducing a deflection insert in its input flow channel. The insertion was capable to create more distributed flow into the runner. Efficiency of the turbine up to 80% was performed in this research. Local manufacture for turbine usually use many craft work and welding to built a volute form housing for the Francis turbine. The cylindrical form housing here has also proven significantly in reducing the time and price for the turbine manufacturing process.