Implementation of Electronic Load Controller for

Control of Micro Hydro Power Plant

Shailendra Kumar Rai O. P. Rahi, Member, IEEE Sunil Kumar

Electrical Engineering Department Electrical Engineering Department Electrical Engineering Department
National Institute of Technology National Institute of Technology National Institute of Technology
Hamirpur, India Hamirpur, India Hamirpur, India
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— Electronic Load Controllers (ELC) are used to Micro hydropower plants are based on run-of-river type.
balance the power at generator terminal to maintain the The operating point of the generator is fixed such that it gives
frequency of the system at nominal value. Load controllers for constant rated output at the rated conditions of voltage,
micro hydro power plants have been an area of interest for current, and speed, but the consumer load may vary. When the
researchers as well as for developers as it is of paramount consumer load on the generator decreases, the turbine begins
importance to keep the frequency constant, which is not possible to accelerate and increases generated frequency. Similarly, an
without controlling the load particularly in the case of micro increase in consumer load on the generator causes deceleration
hydro power plants. The present paper deals with use of an ELC in the turbine speed and the frequency decreases [1-3].
for synchronous generator of micro hydro power plant of rating
60 KW in MATLAB Simulink. The design of ELC using a Now the variation in the consumer load connected is
controlled bridge rectifier and IGBT chopper feeding a resistive balanced by the electronic load controller, which diverts the
dump load has been implemented for simulation in this paper. extra power to a dump load. ELC regulates the voltage and
The power consumption of chopper has been varied by the duty frequency of the generator through monitoring of consumer
cycle of the chopper. The simulation results have shown the
changes in various parameters, i.e., excitation voltage, stator
load variation and automatically transfers any surplus power
current, mechanical power output, output power of generator, produced by the generator in additional load known as dump
power across consumer load, and dump load as a result of the load, so that, the total output power of generator remains equal
change in demand/load. to its rated power [4-8].
Synchronous generator has some advantages over
Keywords— Electronic load controller; Micro hydro power induction generator for such systems. Synchronous generators
plant; Synchronous generator; can run isolated from the grid and it can produce power since
excitation is not grid-dependent [9-11]. Also, synchronous
I. INTRODUCTION generators are readily available in the market, no excitation
Hydropower representational use of water resources capacitors are required to provide reactive power. Highly
towards inflation free energy due to absence of fuel cost with efficient synchronous generators have inbuilt AVR for voltage
mature technology characterized by highest prime mover’s regulation and using synchronous generator with ELC one can
efficiency and spectacular operational flexibility. Hydropower achieve good frequency regulation.
contributes around 22% of the World electricity supply Literature has revealed that lots of work has been done on
generated from about 7,50,000 MW of installed capacity and ELC with asynchronous generator [12-14]. Therefore, this
in many countries, it is the main source of power generation, paper deals with the design of the ELC for a micro
e.g. Norway, Brazil, Switzerland, and Sweden. hydropower plant using synchronous generator. The
developed model consists of hydraulic turbine and the
The conventional large hydropower plants have problem governor, excitation system, universal bridge as rectifier, and
like long gestation period, ecological changes, loss due to long IGBT as a chopper. With the help of MATLAB, Simulink
transmission lines, submergence of valuable forest, and developed model has been simulated and analysed.
underground mineral resources. They also require
rehabilitation of large populations from the area to be
submerged. Due to all these factors large hydropower plants II. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
are unfavorable. On the other hand, Micro Hydropower In proposed methodology, a schematic diagram has been
Projects (MHP) are free from these aspects. In most of the developed for ELC system with synchronous generator and
countries of world micro hydropower plants are defined as the has been shown in “Fig. 1”. The figure consists of 3-phase
hydroelectric system having a capacity up to 100KW. synchronous generator model of 60 KW, 400 V, 50 Hz, 1500
RPM. The generator is a salient pole type driven by a constant

978-1-4673-7492-7/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

hydro turbine. The input to the hydro turbine (i.e. head and PD = Dump load power
discharge) has been assumed to be constant, so the output of
hydro turbine is nearly constant and hence the output power of The power in dump load is given as:
the synchronous generator has been held constant at all loads.
Any decrease or increase in load may accelerate or decelerate (δ V ) 2

the machine which causes the variation in frequency of the PD = DC

(2)
system. The surplus power of the consumer load is dumped in RD
the resistive dump load through an ELC connected at the Where,
terminals of the synchronous generator.
VDC = DC output voltage of thyristor bridge rectifier

δ =duty cycle of chopper

Load
3-phase RD = Dump load resistance
S.G. with
constant
power
The rating of dump load resistance is given as:
input
(V ) 2

RD = DC
(3)
pG
Ref frequency
A. Generator parameter
Frequency Frequency
Control For simulation, the 3 phase synchronous generator model
Sensor
of 60 kW, 400 V, 50 Hz, 4-pole has been considered. The
generator is a salient pole type. The speed of synchronous
generator has been calculated as given below:

3-phase 120 f
convertor Chopper N = = 1500rpm (4)
p
Where,
Dump N =synchronous speed of generator
load
f = frequency of generated voltage
p = no. of poles

B. Design of ELC
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of developed ELC scheme [13] The DC output voltage of controlled bridge rectifier is
given as:
The ELC consists of a controlled universal bridge rectifier
in series with IGBT chopper and dump load. A capacitor has 3 3 × Vm
been used to filter the ripple content of the output voltage of VDC = cos α (5)
the rectifier. π
Where,
III. MODELLING OF ELC FOR SIMULATION α = firing angle
Many Electronic Load Controller circuits have been Vm = Input voltage at ELC terminal
developed based on various methods, to transfer the surplus
power in dump load, to maintain the balance between the When α =0, the VDC will be maximum and is given as,
hydro turbine input and the generator output (1). With the
variation of consumer load, the load controller has to change
the effective dump load resistance, so that, 3 3 × Vm
VDC = (6)
π
PG = PC + PD (1)
ELC current is given as,
Where, PG
PG = Output power of synchronous generator I DC = (7)
VDC
PC = Consumer load power
Where, waveform to result in a PWM signal to alter the duty cycle of
the chopper.
I DC = DC output current of thyristor bridge rectifier

The dump load resistance is calculated as:

(V ) 2

RD = DC
(8)
PG

C. Design of dc filter capacitor

DC filter has been used to remove the ripple content in the
output of a rectifier. The ripple factor of the filter is given by:
1
r= (9)
4 3 × f × C × RL
Where,
r = Ripple factor of C- filter
f = frequency (in Hz)
RL = Resistance of dump load (in Ohm)
Assuming, the ripple factor as 15%. The value of capacitor has
been calculated as given in the following equation.
1
C= (10)
4 3 × f × r × RL

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The simulation has been carried out with the help of
MATLAB, Simulink ver.7.10.0 (R2010a) using solver ode
23tb. The Simulink model of the designed scheme has been as Fig. 2. Simulink model of designed scheme
shown in fig 2. In this simulation study three different cases
have been considered for analysis as given in Table I.
TABLE I. DIFFERENT LOAD CASES FOR SIMULINK ANALYSIS
First case deals with 60 KW load, and the corresponding
behavior of excitation voltage, stator current, mechanical Cases no. Consumer load in kW
power output, output power of generator, power across 1 60
consumer load, and dump load has been shown in Fig. 3-6.
Second case pertains for 50KW load with corresponding 2 50
parameter variation shown in Fig. 7-10. Similarly, third case 3 40
has been analyzed for the load of 40 KW with corresponding
parameter variation shown in Fig. 11-14. The ELC consists of A. Case 1: Consumer load demand is 60kW
a three-phase controlled bridge rectifier. A capacitor is
connected across the bridge rectifier to filter out the ripples. Fig. 3. Excitation voltage
The dump load in series with the chopper switch has been
connected across the DC link. The dump load has been
designed such that, when the duty cycle of the chopper is
unity, it should consume the rated output power of the
generation.
The change in speed of the generator (i.e., change in
frequency) corresponding to the change of load has been
shown, which has been compared with a reference frequency,
which is taken as proportional to the rated frequency of the
generator. A controller has been used to process the error
between feedback and reference frequency signals. The output
of the controller has been compared with a sawtooth carrier
 B. Case 2: Consumer load demand is 50kW

Fig. 4. Stator current

Fig. 7. Excitation voltage

Fig. 5. Mechanical power output

Fig. 8. Stator current

Fig. 6. Output power of generator, power across consumer load, and dump Fig. 9. Output power of generator, power across consumer load, and dump
load load
Fig. 10. Mechanical power output
Fig. 13. Mechanical power output
C. Case 2: Consumer load demand is 50kW

Fig. 11. Excitation voltage

Fig. 14. Output power of generator, power across consumer load, and dump
load

V. CONCLUSION
An Electronic Load Controller (ELC) with synchronous
generator using a three-phase controlled bridge rectifier and
IGBT as chopper converter has been modeled in MATLAB,
Simulink, for controlling the frequency of micro hydro plant
Fig. 12. Stator current under varying load conditions. The various parametric
changes in excitation voltage, rotor speed, stator current,
mechanical power output, generator power across consumer [6] O.P. Rahi, Sanjeev Kumar Gagrai, and Sumit Kumar Rawat, “Simulation
of Turbine Governing in Hydro Power Plants,” International Conference
load, and dump load has been shown in varying load power on Future Trends in Electronics and Electrical Engineering (FTEE –
regime. In this paper the controller has been modeled and the 2013) Bangkok, Thailand, 13 -14 July, 2013, pp. 34-37.
results have been analyzed after simulation. The designed [7] O.P. Rahi, A.K. Chandel, M.G. Sharma, “Investigations into the design
ELC has achieved its objective to control the frequency within of a hydro power plants,” Indian Journal of Power and River Valley
permissible limits with varying settling time. This ELC can be Development, pp. 132-144, 2014.
fabricated and used efficiently in micro hydropower plants [8] O.P. Rahi and G. Kumar, “Simulation Studies for Refurbishment and
Uprating of Hydro Power Plants,” IEEE Power & Energy Society
successfully. General Meeting 2014 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention
Center located in National Harbor, Washington, DC, pp. 1-5, 27-31 July,
2014.
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