Development of a Water Impulse Turbine for Pico-Hydro Energy Generation in Off-Grid Rural Areas

Pico-hydro is a low cost and clean power generation system that harnesses the energy from flowing low head and low flow streams and rivers. Pico-hydro plays a key enabler to address the lack of electricity in remote areas, particularly in forested regions, where conventional grid extension is expensive, complex, and limited, relying on varying water flows such as river flow and waterfall flow for its operation. This project designs a versatile water impulse turbine (Pelton turbine) on an ultra-low head condition. The design incorporates a flat surface base to ensure system stability when subjected to vibrations during the rotational movement of the turbine. The actual prototype employs hollow mild steel as the material for the turbine casing. The turbine is fabricated using 3D printing using PETG material for the 24 Pelton turbine buckets and one rotational disk. The project was tested under ultra-low head of 1 m water head height with different pipe sizes from 15 mm to 32 mm, different number of turbine bucket from 6-buckets to 24-buckets and different flow rates. The quantity of energy produced by the pico-hydro generating system is influenced by two key factors which are head and water flow. This project achieved its highest speed at 89.8 RPM, with turbine efficiency reaching up to 88.14%.