Performance study of Micro-hydropower system in Nepal

This study focuses on the performance study of the Micro-Hydropower Plant (MHP), upto 100 kW, system in terms of the overall efficiency, that is, water- to- wire efficiency. MHP has been playing a significant role for electrification of the remote rural areas of the Nepal. Generally, 50 % overall efficiency is adopted while designing the MHP without consideration of the sizes of the plants due to the lack of testing facilities of such domestically made turbine before installation. The field test was conducted, in each individual powerhouse, using additional dump load (ADL) method. In this method, the consumer load and Electronic Load Controller (ELC) were disconnected and terminals of the ADL were connected to generator. During the testing ADL was switched on 1 kW interval and the discharge was controlled through the gate valve by maintaining frequency of 50 Hz. The corresponding discharge was recorded along with net head, current and voltage. Then the flow versus overall efficiency of the plant gives the maximum water to wire efficiency of the plant at a given discharge.