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Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene
Technical note
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: In the context of micro-hydro power schemes the initial cost of conventional Francis turbine units is
Received 5 February 2014 often prohibitive. As such there is growing interest in pump-as-turbine (PAT) technology offering a more
Accepted 10 December 2014 cost effective, yet still highly efcient, power generating alternative, nding uses in remote area power
Available online
supply and energy recovery systems. However, the implementation of a PAT is highly problematic in
terms of predicting the installed best operating point coupled with poor off-design performance due to
Keywords:
the xed geometry and absence of inlet ow control. In the current work a micro-hydro test facility and
Micro-hydro
turbine unit is developed utilising a commercially available pump impeller together with a customised
Hydro power
Pump-as-turbine
housing for incorporation of inlet ow control. Working initially from established PAT theory, this paper
Remote area power generation presents the design and performance testing of a hydraulic turbine unit suitable for use in rural micro-
Waste energy recovery systems hydro, and energy recovery installations. Maximum efciency of the unit was found to be 79%,
marginally higher than that of the parent pump, while the off-design efciency offered considerable
improvement over previously published data of traditional PAT systems. The design provides a cost
effective power generator in comparison to small scale Francis turbines, while providing a greater
operational range than traditional PAT units.
2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2014.12.027
0960-1481/ 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
2 D.R. Giosio et al. / Renewable Energy 78 (2015) 1e6
acceptable range of the prediction criterion. More recently, Ven- water storage, adjustable turbine and generator support frame,
trone et al. [7] presented a detailed method of turbine performance pump-turbine unit, clear acrylic circular section draft tube, and
prediction through the denition of a runner momentum coef- open discharge tank with return channel to underoor storage pit.
cient, jR, which describes the specic momentum work performed Flow may be provided directly from the 22 kW supply pump,
within the runner proper assuming zero incident losses. For the delivering up to 10 m head at 150 L/s, or via a hydraulically isolated
four pumps tested the proposed method gives values within 4% of storage tank for investigation of penstock pressure pulsations
experimental values, although a larger sample size is needed to associated with transient operation, see Figs. 1 and 2.
verify the reliability of the proposed method. Moreover, the
method requires specic knowledge of pump geometric parame- 2.1. Pump as turbine unit design principles
ters, as well as performance curves, and is therefore limited in its
ability as a pump selection tool as these details are often not readily In most site installations of PAT units an induction motor is used
available. in place of a synchronous generator [10]. A directly coupled in-
Consequently, due to the nature and constraints of micro-hydro duction generator removes the need for any belts or gearing,
sites, if the installed BEP is found to differ to some degree from the minimises any lateral force thereby prolonging bearing life, elimi-
predicted operating point the PAT will operate at sub-optimal ef- nates the requirement for a turbine shaft bearing, and is low cost -
ciency for a high proportion of its operational life. particularly compared to synchronous generators of sizes up to
Recent work by Alexander and Giddens [8], and Alexander et al. 30 kW [10]. However this requires that one of the synchronous
[9] has investigated an extensive range of modular, xed geometry speeds, corresponding to the number of poles of the induction
microhydro turbine units. The turbine units described are designed generator, must be chosen as the turbine operating speed [4].
for ease of manufacture and consistantly obtain hydraulic ef- As a rst approximation the method of Sharma [6] was used to
ciencies greater than 70%. Most importantly, perhaps, is the scale- determine the required pump characteristics. In order to allow for
ability of the units, providing micro-hydro developers with units operation at a reduced speed an additional correction was made
whereby the performance at site conditions may be well predicted. based on turbine afnity laws as Q fN and HfN2 such that
However, as with traditional PAT units, the lack of inlet ow control
2
may somewhat limit the efcient turbine operating range. Nt QpBEP Nt HpBEP
Qt ; Ht (1)
This paper presents the development of a turbine using an off- Np h0:8
pBEP Np h1:2
pBEP
the-shelf pump impeller together with a customised housing
incorporating inlet ow control. Working initially from established Knowing the available turbine net head and ow rate, Ht and Qt,
PAT theory the design and performance testing of a hydraulic tur- and the required turbine speed, Nt, Eq. (1a) and Eq. (1b) can be used
bine unit suitable for use in rural micro-hydro and energy recovery to select a suitable pump impeller based on readily available
installations is given. The resulting design provides a cost effective manufacturers data. The selected pump impeller was a KSB Ajax I.S.
power generator in comparison to small scale Francis turbines series impeller with turbine runner outlet diameter, D 226 mm.
while providing a greater operational range than traditional pump- No blade geometry modications were performed. The rated values
as-turbine units. In typical micro-hydro power applications, where (BEP) of the pump unit from which the impeller is taken, and the
water storage catchments or industrial operating conditions may predicted and actual turbine performance are given later in Table 1
vary, the improved off-design efciency is highly desirable. (Section 4).
Fig. 1. Pump-turbine unit installed at the University of Tasmania micro-hydro test facility.
D.R. Giosio et al. / Renewable Energy 78 (2015) 1e6 3
For determination of test specic energy Druck UNIK 5000 Ph ErQ W (3)
gauge pressure transducers, 0e100 kPa range, were tted to ring
The power transferred to the turbine shaft is given by
manifolds with individually valved tappings located at spiral inlet,
and draft tube outlet. Each unit has a frequency response of 3.5 kHz
Ps 2pn$TW (4)
and was calibrated over the full range with a maximum uncertainty
of 0.06% full scale. Flow rate measurement is achieved using a where the torque, T, is calculated from the measured shaft strain as
Yokogawa US300PM ultrasonic ow meter tted upstream the
turbine inlet with an accuracy of 0.01 m/s over the sonic path.
pG D4s Fc
An optical sensor and 500 hole disc was mounted on the non- T Nm=v (5)
8D 106
drive end of the generator for test speed measurement. For
steady state tests a rolling average was used, updated every pulse. where G is the shear modulus of the solid stainless steel shaft (of
An independent induction pick-up was mounted on the drive end diameter Ds) and Fc is the strain gauge calibration coefcient.
for grid synchronisation and overspeed protection. Shaft torque Turbine performance is presented in terms of three key
measurement was achieved with a full bridge 350 U strain gauge dimensionless parameters: energy coefcient, EnD, ow coefcient,
installed on an exposed section of turbine shaft with data acqui- QnD, and the power coefcient, PnD, dened as
sition via a KMT digital telemetry system. The encoder scanning
rate was 6.94 kHz with a system accuracy of 0.2%. Turbine unit E Q Pm
efciency is therefore stated with an uncertainty of 1.3% based on EnD ; QnD ; PnD 3 5 (6)
n2 D 2 nD3 rn D
the propagation of errors method [11].
The hill chart of turbine efciency contours shown in Fig. 4 is
given in terms of overall efciency, ho, which is dened as the po-
3. Experimental methodology wer transferred to the turbine shaft relative to the available hy-
draulic power.
During steady state performance testing data was recorded at
each operational point with a sample frequency of 100 Hz, acquired Ps 2pn$T
ho (7)
by an NI M Series Multifunction DAQ SCB-68 card. For the con- Ph E$rQ
struction of the turbine efciency hill chart tests were conducted
As such the overall efciency incorporates mechanical ef-
for guide vane opening angles ranging between 20 and 35 ,
ciency, taking into account mechanical losses in shaft seals and
equivalent to a range of between 53% and 92% full stroke. Tests were
bearings; volumetric efciency, taking into account leakage and
conducted at net specic energy values of 34.3 J/kg up to 83.3 J/kg
cooling water ow; and hydraulic efciency, dening the amount of
in 5 J/kg increments to ensure a thorough exploration of the entire
power extracted by the runner from the power available from the
operating range.
water. Owing to the tight internal tolerances of the casing the
In accordance with IEC Standards [12] the net specic energy
volumetric efciency can be approximated to hv z 1, with only
across the machine was calculated as
small losses due to cooling water ow, so that
Fig. 3. Square section spiral case incorporating the guide vane mechanism prior to nal assembly.
Fig. 5. Turbine efciency (B) and power coefcient (,) at constant specic energies corresponding to tank min. level, BEP and tank max. level.
This is in contrast with the belief that slip, due to a relative rota- ow for an additional 10% efciency reduction at rated EnD. This
tional velocity within the blade passages, is only present in pump compares favourably with previously presented data on PAT per-
mode such that ow should be increased in order to minimise formance by Yang et al. [13], Williams et al. [10], Derakhshan and
incidence losses. However, a degree of slip is also present in turbine Nourbakhsh [14] and Singh [2] that all report signicant reduction
operation, and an increase in incidence loss due to higher ow is in turbine operation efciency due to the inherent lack of inlet ow
balanced in some degree by the mechanical efciency. This control and associated large incidence losses. In the sphere of
decreasing inuence of mechanical losses can be seen in Fig. 6 micro-hydro remote area power installations the ability to operate
whereby the overall efciency approaches the hydraulic efciency efciently at off-design conditions is extremely important as water
at normalised ow Q/QBEP > 1. storage reservoirs are often limited in capacity and catchments are
Of practical interest is the general atness of the efciency map, subject to highly uctuating, often seasonal inows.
particularly around the BEP. This is also shown in Fig. 5, presented
for three cases of constant specic energy corresponding to tank 4.1. Weighted-average-efciency (WAE)
minimum supply level, BEP condition and tank maximum supply
level. The variation in head represents a range of static head be- The weighted average efciency provides developers of micro-
tween approximately 0.85HBEP and 1.2HBEP. The efciency in each hydro installations a means to quantitatively compare generation
case remains considerably high even with signicant decreases in alternatives, taking into consideration the likely percentage of time
ow. Indeed, in all cases a 30% ow reduction is required to see a the unit will be operating under off-design conditions. As dened
10% reduction in overall efciency, and a further 20% decrease in by Eq. (10), the WAE is determined at 1.0Pr, 0.8Pr and 0.6.Pr
Fig. 6. Turbine efciency (B) and power () at constant guide vane opening of 30 . Power and ow rate normalised by values at B.E.P.
6 D.R. Giosio et al. / Renewable Energy 78 (2015) 1e6
Nomenclature
5. Conclusions
References
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