Hydroelectric Generation Plant Research Articles

Control and Monitoring System for a Hydrogen Sulfide Gas Bio-filter Applied to a Hydroelectric Generation Plant

Control and Monitoring System for a Hydrogen Sulfide Gas Bio-filter Applied to a Hydroelectric Generation Plant

Analysis of maintenance optimization in a hydroelectric power plant

<p>This article presents a guide to designing a maintenance plan for any industrial system. As an example, it develops a maintenance plan for highly reliable equipment, such as a hydroelectric power plant, where instant availability and reliability are crucial in its operation. The development of the proposal serves as a basis for the transversal development of any industrial system that has the same operational objectives (manufacturing lines), transport (trains, aircraft) and also involves safety and environmental aspects in its proper functioning. Today’s society requires that there are more and more industrial processes in which the maximum availability of the systems must be guaranteed, and at the same time there must be a minimum number of incidents that prevent the unavailability of the process. The methodology used has consisted firstly of dividing the complex industrial system into systems to be analysed on the basis of the functions they have to perform, then on the basis of the fault history a list of potential faults to be analysed has been determined, taking into account the risk of the system itself. From here, the systems of the hydroelectric plant have been classified to determine the priorities of actions. The different maintenance techniques to be applied have been carefully considered, focusing on the need to analyse condition-based maintenance techniques, such as predictive techniques, which allow us to define the point of potential failure based on parameters, and thus be able to plan maintenance actions in a justified manner. In the specific case of a hydroelectric generation plant, the fundamental objective is based on the commitment to<br />operate in the electricity market (high reliability and immediate availability), and the performance of maintenance actions imply in most cases the shutdown of the plant and therefore the loss of income from electricity production. Finally, a design of a justified maintenance plan for a hydroelectric power plant has been proposed based on the methodology explained.</p>

Frequency-domain data-driven control design in the Loewner framework

In this article, a direct data-driven design method, based on frequency-domain data, is proposed. The identification of the plant is skipped and the controller is designed directly from the measurements. The identification task is reported on a fixed-order controller using for the first time the Loewner approach, known for model approximation and reduction. The method is validated on two numerical examples including the control of an industrial hydroelectric generation plant, modelled by irrational equations.

Calculation of Lightning-Induced Voltages and Currents on the Transformers Courtyard of Tucuruí Hydroelectric Generation Plant Using the Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method

In this work, voltages and currents induced due to lightning occurrence on the transformers' courtyard of Tucurui hydroelectric generation plant are calculated by employing the Finite-Difference Time-Domain method. The transient functions are obtained for 500 kV-transmission lines at the output of the power plant. In order to the simulations become viable from the computational point of view, it was necessary to use parallel processing for dividing the analysis region into 24 subdomains (24 computer cores were used). The simulated problem in this work consists on an 1 kA-lightning stroke on phase A of the output transmission system of the Tucurui's plant. In this work, induced voltages between the phase A of the line and the following reference points were obtained: a) the courtyard grounding mesh for voltage transformers, b) ground grid in the first floor concrete, c) rock (basalt) surface at the base of the plant, d) the soil's layer and water surfaces. Transient voltages induced between the phases A, B and V of the transmission line are also analyzed. These data are important because the electrical system is based on voltage differences between phases. It is also noticed that, in this case, the maximum induced voltage between phases A and B is approximately 157.9 kV/kA. It is also performed a study regarding voltage supportability for line insulators on the structure.

Simplified Model of a Hydroelectric Generation Plant for Teaching Purposes

A simplified model of a hydroelectric generation plant with an associated reservoir, developed for the SimEnerg simulator for didactic purposes, is presented. SimEnerg was originally developed for simulating autonomous wind and solar systems. Due to this, it was necessary to improve it in order to handle integrated generation systems. A brief description of SimEnerg and of the improvements are presented. A methodology for synthesizing series of a set of random variables is also presented. This methodology is based on the identification of the historical data and it is designed to maintain the histogram of the amplitudes of each series and the auto and cross correlation coeficients in a transformed space.

ECDEX: A knowledge-based approach to conceptual design of engineering systems

This paper describes a knowledge-based approach to the domain independent conceptual design phase. We describe the development of “ECDEX”, the “Engineering Conceptual Design Expert” that generates concept variants (concept alternatives) during the conceptual design phase of engineering systems. ECDEX was developed using an expert system shell called CLIPS (C Language Integrated Production System) and a C-program interface to aid the quantitative phase of concept evaluation. ECDEX internally develops function structures that are dependent on the number of solution principles for each sub-function selected during the process. After the function structures are developed, ECDEX searches for solution principles for each of the sub-functions considering that every combination needs to begin with the system input and end with the system output. After all combinations are developed, ECDEX performs the concept evaluation using evaluation criteria defined by the designer providing a set of ‘concept variants’. ECDEX is applied to three test cases; an impulse loading test rig, a hydro-electric generation plant and a fishing reel. The results from these three test cases demonstrate that ECDEX generates satisfactory conceptual designs of engineering systems.