Abstract
The national grid of Nepal faces several hurdles during its operation, especially in remote areas of hilly and mountain region. Citizens face blackouts of days to weeks, due disturbances caused in the grid in those regions. Micro hydro can be a very strategic backup for the national grid in those regions. However, due to lack of subsidy, which used to be provided in the past, for development of micro hydro, micro developers are unable to afford the construction cost of the micro hydro. Thus using Pumps that are readily available in the market at a much cheaper price, compared to custom built hydro turbines, as turbines can be a very economical alternative for such cases. But the concept of pump as turbine has not been utilized in Nepalese market. In this study, a centrifugal pump abundantly available in the Nepalese market has been used to evaluate its performance in turbine mode as well as in pump mode. A characteristic performance curve of the pump operated in turbine mode is obtained from the experimental data. The Best efficiency point and the operating regime is also determined based on the results obtained from experiments. The head conversion factor and discharge conversion factor calculated based on the data measured from the experiment, at various operating conditions, are compared to previous works done by other researchers. The performance obtained from the experimental analysis is comparable to the performance of the turbines installed in the micro hydro power projects. PAT can be a game changer in the micro hydro sector, by providing a very economical and technically viable option of expensive hydro turbines.
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