An Al based Governing Technique for Automatic Control of Small Hydro Power Plants

Abstract

This paper presents a flow control approach for the speed control of hydro turbines. Power can be controlled by controlling the rotary motion of the spear valve. In this paper, a flow control based model is proposed for the automatic control of small hydro power plants. In the proposed model, a servomotor is used to control the flow of water by controlling the rotational motion of the spear valve. The spear valve causes a ‘continuous’ control of the flow of water. The suitability of servomotors for the control of small hydro power plants is discussed and PI controllers are used to further enhance their governing capability. State space representation is used to mathematically model the proposed model. Extensive simulations are performed to analyze the behaviour of the proposed model. Parameter optimization is performed using Artificial Neural Networks.

Indexing terms:

• Speed Control
• Ballasts
• Automatic Control
• Servomotor
• Proportional Integral Controller
• Stochastic Load Disturbance
• Artificial Neural Networks

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M Hanmandlu

M Hanmandlu is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Delhi. He received BE from Osmania University in 1973, MTech from JNTU, REC, Warangal in 1976, and PhD from IIT Delhi in 1981. He held different positions in IIT Delhi before becoming a Professor in 1997. His research interests include fuzzy modeling, document processing, image processing and computer vision.

Himani Goyal

Himani Goyal is pursuing her PhD degree from Center for Energy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. She did her BE in Electronics Engineering from RAIT, University of Mumbai, Mumbai, India in 1995 and M Tech in Alternate Hydro Energy Systems from, IIT Roorkee in 2000–2001. She is working in the area of Automatic Control of Small Hydro Power plants and has published and presented a number of papers in international journals and conferences.

D P Kothari

DP Kothari is a professor in Center for Energy Studies, and the Director-in-charge, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. A Senior Fellow of IEEE, Prof Kothari has published/presented nearly 500 papers in national and international journals/conferences. He has authored/co-authored more than 18 books. His research interests include power system control, optimization, reliability and energy conservation.