Performance Assessment and Upgrading of Walga Micro-Hydro Power Station

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Date

2017-07

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Addis Ababa University

Abstract

This research deals with the performance assessment and upgrading of Walga micro hydro power plant owned by government and fitted with cross flow turbine. Walga site is located in Oromia Regional State, South West Shoa zone, Wonchi Woreda Azer_Keransa Kebele. Walga site is located in a remote area. Currently, even though the village has the opportunity to get power from micro hydro power plant that was installed in 2014 by the Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, still the plant lacks reliability, sustainability and safety problems. The key reasons for the performance assessment and up grading of the existing Walga micro hydro power station were to know the efficiencies (turbine and unit efficiencies) and to determine the electrical power output of the plant. And also to know the power demand gap between supply side from the existing micro hydro power generator and demand side obtained from the village power demand assessment during the field survey. Therefore, performance assessment and testing, power need assessment of the community, determination of the power gap between the supply side from the existing Walga micro hydro power station and demand side were the purpose of this thesis work. In this study, performance assessment of existing Walga micro hydro power station was carried out and performance indicators were identified. Based on the performance test results and the village power demand assessment findings, the power demand gap of Walga village was known., Two options were proposed to meet the power demand gap of the village. The first option is developing a PV/micro hydro hybrid power supply system and the second option is developing micro hydro resource existing at the site. System designing and modeling by using Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable software for the two options were done and the simulation results were presented. Based on the Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable software simulation results, the performance and economic evaluations of each system were presented. Option I is characterized by as initial cost 8,719,300 Birr ($379,100), operating cost 276,690 Birr ($12,030), total NPC 12,618,812 Birr ($548,644) and cost of energy 8.70/kWh Birr (0.378$/KWh). The second option (Option II) is characterized by initial cost 1,357,000 Birr ($59,000), operating cost 54,510 Birr ($2,370), total NPC2,125,269 Birr ($92,403) and cost of energy1.47Birr/kWh (0.064$/KWh). Finally, the performance evaluations and economic evaluations made for the option I and option II. From the evaluation results, option II was selected as better option to fill the power demand gap of Walga village.

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