Design and analysis of a portable spiral vortex hydro turbine for a Pico Hydro Power Plant

Abstract

Pico Hydro Power Plant (PHPP) is a hydroelectric power plant with a scale below 5 kW. This technology is suitable to be applied to areas that have many rivers with sloping slopes. The PHPP applied in this research utilized the river flow and then flowing the water through a water channel with a slope angle around 10 degrees. Due to this sloping angle, it is necessary to modify the turbine intake to produce a more rapid water flow so that the turbine can rotate faster. The modification is made by designing and making a spiral vortex hydro turbine, where the intake is designed to resemble a snail house or a whistle to produce a spiral vortex to drive a turbine. The results show that the spiral vortex hydro turbine can produce faster turbine rotation, compared with a conventional water intake. The speed of the portable spiral vortex hydro turbine in this research can reach 90 rpm. Then, the turbine is coupled with a generator to produce electricity, through a pulley system. The faster the turbine rotation, the higher the generator output voltage. The highest output voltage of the generator is 27.5 Vdc at the speed of 293 rpm. In addition, the device is easy to move and maintain due to its portable design with a weight of 22 kg.