Integration Controller For Pico Hydro Power Plant Using Fuzzy-PID Flow Control Technique

Energy is a critical component in a country's development. Nowadays, research focuses on green technology, particularly renewable energy resources. It includes wind energy, solar energy, and hydropower, abundant and practically limitless in the natural environment. Hydropower, more specifically standalone pico hydro, is not only environmentally friendly, but it is also convenient for end-users in terms of easy onsite installation, lower cost, low maintenance, and site accessibility, as most rural areas do not have grid access, especially for those living in Sabah and Sarawak. The purpose of pico hydro generating power is to keep the plant's output power parameters within acceptable limits. Therefore, it is critical to maintaining the output power parameters for better performance and efficiency by developing an integrated frequency response controller for standalone pico hydro systems. In this study, various controllers were thoroughly discussed during the literature review. This research aimed to design and implement an efficient hydro turbine management unit with integrated control using an intelligent approach to fuzzy-proportional integral derivative (PID) flow control and a PID load controller before analysis and verification. Our results revealed that using an integrated controller on a pico hydro system improves output response in overshoot percentage and peak value. Meanwhile, the simulation showed that the overshoot for mechanical output using the fuzzy-PID controller was slightly higher, at around 0.641%. However, it was lower in terms of rising time, i.e., 889.30 ms, when compared to the conventional PID controller.