Fuzzy FPGA based captive power management

The use of captive power is on the rise across the globe. In India alone, the estimated capacity of captive power plants is nearly 20,000 MW and most of the practical power plants are run sub-optimally by operators (albeit experienced ones). This calls for low-cost dedicated automatic controllers for the efficient management of captive power. Some studies have been reported in recent literature for the power management of islanded power plants, ad hoc network etc., but most studies are confined to computer simulations only. This paper reports a novel practical implementation of a dedicated real-time fuzzy logic controller on a low cost field programmable gate array chip for the management of 125 kW of captive power available from a medium capacity diesel generator set. A college campus has been chosen as the site for this implementation since it represents requirements typically suited for captive power use.