A Control Scheme for In-Conduit Hydropower Generators to Maximize Power Generation From Waste Energy in Pressure Reducing Valves

An interval type-2 fuzzy logic (IT2FL)-based technique is proposed to control the operation of an in-conduit hydropower generator for recapturing waste energy in water pressure reducing valves (PRVs) and generating maximum power. Using an experimental setup, an actual water supply station is simulated for testing the operation and control of the in-conduit generator. The test system includes one hydro-powered generator, two PRVs, and two motor-operated valves (MOVs). An IT2FL method developed in MATLAB is used to control MOVs in order to adjust the customer pressure and maximize the generator efficiency. A prototype hardware setup is developed to produce the voltage set points that 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 hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) setup under various flow and pressure values and compared to type-1 fuzzy logic (T1FL) and existing pseudo algorithms. Also, an economic analysis is carried out using real data of a water booster section in Northern Nevada for justifying the economic benefits of the proposed scheme.