Adaptation of Water Pump as a Micro Hydro-Turbine for Electricity Generation

The concern on the global environment has imposed restraints on the production of electricity. The emphasis recently is on the development of environmental friendly methods to promote sustainable power production as it is in micro hydro power generation. The running cost of such plants is low but initial capital cost can be relatively high. By reducing the equipment cost in micro hydropower system, micro hydro turbines can become more useful and easily affordable. Reducing the equipment cost by the use of centrifugal pump in reverse mode can be an alternative to conventional hydraulic turbine. This paper discussed the adaptation of a water pump to function as a small hydro-turbine to be utilized in small stream in rural areas. Annual rainfall data was obtained from a 14 year data from National Centre of Agricultural Mechanization (NCAM) to obtain the discharge from river Odurun. By using the codrier graph method, a pump with a diameter of 245 mm was chosen from three pump obtained from a manufacturer catalogue. The speed at which the turbine will run was evaluated to be 1437 rpm with a head of 29 m, discharge of 0.044 m 3 /s and a power output of 10.1 kW with a model number of NW 10D. It was based on the site boundary conditions the pump selection was made and the performance evaluated using ratios of the head and discharge coefficients.