Microhydrovortex System with Autonomous Control for Harvesting Energy from Water Sources at Community Level

When harvested at a large scale, hydro power comes at a huge investment cost and environmental impact. On the other hand, low scale hydropower has been traditionally challenging due to the low efficiency of energy conversion. However, the microhydrovotrex technology has the potential to overcome this shortcoming to generate power at community level by deriving energy from rivers, streams and even accumulated water sources at community level, hence facilitating distributed power generation close to the energy demand. Special consideration needs to be given to the turbine design to harness the energy generated by the vortex effect where considerations must be taken to provide the system from devasting flash flood from rivers. There are limited research findings reported in the literature on the overall performance of small-scale hydropower systems with respect to control of its performance with fluctuating input flow, In this paper, a mathematical modelling analysis approach was taken to optimize the system design, implementation and control using CFD simulation and experimentation with a small prototype to validate the theoretical and simulation results. The prototype had a control panel, consisting of a combination of sensors and motor driver to autonomously control and monitor the power output from the system, hence allowing to regulate the incoming flow to maximize the power generated from the system. By using the results based on the prototype, Case studies are proposed for community-based energy harvesting with integration with rivers and streams compared to Photovoltaic Systems.