Numerical study of the effect of penstock slope on the increase in electric power of micro-hydro system using Computational Fluid Dynamics
Abstract Micro-hydropower plants have become one of the alternative solutions to meet the electricity needs of people in remote villages that the public electricity company has not reached. However, the performance of a micro-hydro system has to be continuously developed. This research aims to improve the performance of a micro-hydro system by examining the effect of the slope of the penstock on the increase in electrical power. The penstock slope is varied with diverse angles, namely θ = 50 °, 60 °, 70 °, 80 °, and 90 °. Five simulations of water flow in the penstock for five slope angles were constructed using the open-source CFD software, i.e., OpenFOAM. We calculate the electric power for the five simulations aforementioned. The calculation results show that the variation of the penstock slope can affect the increase of the electric power of a micro-hydro system. The highest electric power occurs at a maximum slope, θ = 90 °.