Renewable Energy Power Generation using Waste Energy in Water Pressure Reducing Valves

This paper proposes a method for renewable energy power generation using waste energy in water pressure reducing valves (PRVs). An interval type-2 fuzzy logic (IT2FL) control-based technique is proposed to recapture waste energy in PRVs and generate electricity using an in-conduit hydropower generator. An experimental setup is used to simulate an actual water supply station for testing the operation and control of the in-conduit generator. The test system is comprised of one hydro-powered generator, two PRVs, and two motor-operated valves (MOVs). The MOVs are controlled by IT2FL method developed in MATLAB in order to adjust the customer pressure and maximize the generator efficiency. A hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) setup is developed to produce the voltage set points which control the MOV actuators using the pressures which are measured by transducers and transferred to the IT2FL algorithm via a data acquisition and control system. The generator operational limit is met to avoid any possible damage. The IT2FL control-based algorithm is tested on the prototype hardware setup under various flow and pressure values and compared to type-1 fuzzy logic (T1FL) and existing pseudo algorithms. Because PRVs are used throughout the water distribution system across the world, the proposed renewable energy generation using the waste energy is truly distributed and can have a significant effect in smart microgrid applications.