Hydro Power Generation and Analysis of Various Turbine Efficiencies

Hydropower engineering tries to tap this vast amount of energy available in the flowing water on the earth’s surface and convert that to electricity. There is another form of water energy that is used for hydropower development: the variation of the ocean water with time due to the moon’s pull, which is termed as the tide. Hence, hydropower engineering deals with mostly two forms of energy and suggest methods for converting the energy of water into electric energy. In nature, a flowing stream of water dissipates throughout the length of the watercourse and is of little use for power generation. A zero head water turbine has been used as a source of power generation where construction of a dam for the head is not required. It works on natural flow of water to generate a specific power output. The power is however limited by flow of water which is sufficient to keep generate a suitable number of revolutions per minutes for the blades. Present research was aimed to design and manufacture a micro zero head turbine which could produce sufficient power to light a couple of energy saver bulbs up to a wattage of 50 to 60 that can suffice the lighting requirements far flung villagers and dwellers having access to natural streams of water but no electricity supply. It resulted in design and fabrication of one such turbine which was able to generate a power of approximately 50 watts at a free stream velocity of 1.2 meter/second. Findings of this research were quite in harmony with theoretical results which may be used for increasing the size of micro turbine along with a proportionate rise in generated power.