The Hydroelectric Power Plants Application with Pelton Turbine, “AEL-HPPP”, has been designed by EDIBON with a double purpose: inone hand it allows to study the mechanical characteristics of a Pelton turbine (designed by EDIBON) and, on the other hand, it allows tostudy the operation of real hydroelectric power plants.

This application consists of real mechanical and electrical elements (reduced scale) for testing in laboratories.

• Study of mechanical characteristics of the turbine: The “AEL-HPPP” Application consists of a water tank (water reservoir) from which the water is propelled via pipe through a high power water pump (potential energy) up to an injector in which is installed a pressure sensor. Injector injects water into the Pelton turbine, which consists of 16 appreciable vanes from the transparent cover of the turbine. This application offers the advantage of controlling the water pressure of the injector via pump speed control (flow/pressure variations). The pipe output of the water pump has a flowmeter that allows measure the water flow injected into the turbine. On this way different pressures can be got to analyze several operation regimes of the Pelton turbine, as well as power generation variations. Thus, it is included a torque sensor, a braking system and a load cell to measure the turbine torque. This allows to obtain the characteristic curves of the turbine.
• Study of hydroelectric power plants: Because its versatility and flexibility, this application permits to study the operation of both large hydroelectric power plants, that provide energy into the grid (parallel operation mode), and mini hydroelectric centers that provide energy to an isolated grid (stand-alone operation mode). A 1kW three-phase induction generator is coupled to the Pelton turbine shaft in order to synchronize the generator to the laboratory grid (50 Hz or 60 Hz). The “AEL-HPPP” has an automatic grid connection device with pre-insertion resistors, to avoid sudden torque changes in the generator and turbine at the time of synchronization. A network analyzer is connected to the induction generator terminals to monitor the power generation parameters such as active power, reactive power, apparent power, phase currents, frequency and power factor. In addition, this application has a capacitor bench that provides reactive energy to the generator when user works with the application as mini hydroelectric central (stand-alone mode), providing power to a local electric load (included).

The “AEL-HPPP” application consists of the following elements:

• Industrial rack with three phase power supply with differential and magnetothermal protection.
• Instrumentation panel:

• Digital network analyzer to measure generator electrical parameters (V, f, P, Q, S, PF, etc).
• Generator analog voltmeter.
• Generator analog wattmeter.
• Generator analog varmeter.

• Three-phase overcurrent protection relay.
• Real electrical diagram panel.
• Power, control and sensor connections panel.
• Three phase capacitive load bench to provide reactive energy to the generator.
• Three phase resistive load bench for energy consumption in stand-alone operation.
• Soft coupler system of the generator with the grid.
• CWTP. Conjunction of water tank, Pelton Turbine – Generator, injector, sensors and water pump.

This Computer Controlled Unit is supplied with the EDIBON Computer Control System (SCADA), and includes: The unit itself + a Control Interface Box + a Data Acquisition Board + Computer Control, Data Acquisition and Data Management Software Packages, for controlling the process and all parameters involved in the process.