Abstract
Recently, global warming has become a major problem. Therefore, the development of technologies for generating clean energy without producing CO2 is required. Micro-hydroelectric power generation is one of the promising options as it requires small simple facilities, and a stable output. The authors have proposed a new system for generating micro-hydroelectric power. The proposed system has a simple mechanism and high efficiency. The proposed system was tested in a real river; however, it was very difficult to study all the characteristics of the system, including those of the hydraulic turbine, because it was very difficult to vary the water flow in a real river. In this paper, the authors propose a new test facility for micro-hydroelectric generation systems. In this system, water flow is generated using a general-purpose pump that can be used to increase pressure of the water flow in order to simulate a head. The fundamental characteristics of the proposed system are determined using the proposed facility and a water head between 1m and 10m and water flow of up to 500L/s. The study of the test facility is very useful in developing high-efficiency micro-hydroelectric generation system.
