DESIGN OF DISTRIBUTED ELECTRONIC LOAD CONTROLLER (DELC) FOR MICRO HYDRO POWER TO TRANSFER WASTED POWER TO THE COMMUNITY

Abstract

In a Conventional-ELC (C-ELC), usually a chopper with a dump load is used in parallel with the consumer loads to provide regulation of voltage and control of the frequency. However, in the C-ELC configuration excess generated power may be wasted in a dump load. The objective of this research is to design a simplified ELC for the community to transfer the wasted power for domestic consumption in addition to providing voltage regulation. Hence, a new ELC topology is proposed. This topology can be split into two parts. The first part is a regular ELC of low rated power, which should be installed at the generator site and it is responsible for precise voltage and frequency regulation and dealing with unexpected failure conditions. The second one is a simplified and inexpensive ELC, which is installed near the center of the community, is in addition to participation in voltage regulation by maintaining constancy of the load power. This concept is referred to here as the Distributed ELC (DELC). One significant advantage of the proposed DELC approach is that the waste power can be utilized for drinking water with a minimum capacity of 250Kg water per day and minimize health benefits related to drinking water. Simulation results demonstrate that even with unbalanced three-phase loads (assisted with bi-directional switches per-phase), the proposed topology has the capability to regulate voltage from no-load to full load