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Australian scientists have proposed using a propeller picohydroelectric turbine to recover the energy used to pump water in a solar-powered commercial building.
A group of Australian scientists have proposed using a propeller picohydroelectric turbine to recover the energy used to pump water in commercial buildings through a filtration system.
Pico-hydroelectric systems are fully hydraulic systems with a capacity of less than 5 kW and are commonly used as a cheap and easy-to-deploy source of energy in the most inaccessible places in the world.
“Our system was designed to operate continuously with the pumping system, but it was also synchronized with a photovoltaic system, since both the photovoltaic and the picohydraulic are fed from the buildings electrical distribution panels,” the Corresponding author of the research, Sascha Thyer. “Through a distribution board, they were connected to a power control system that could distribute load and generation as needed. “The advantage of this situation is that the PV generates only during the day and the picohydraulic generates continuously, so it could provide some peak load savings at night.”
In the article “ Energy recovery in a commercial building using pico-hydropower turbines: An Australian case study, ” published in Heliyon , the research group explains that The system was tested in a public aquarium building equipped with a 260 kW photovoltaic system initially intended to operate under the Australian feed-in tariff program, a 20 kL thermal energy storage tank, a carbon material thermal storage system phase change (PCM) and a 90 kWh electric battery storage system.
The building also uses a filtration system based on a pumping system that uses seawater. “As the water returned by gravity to the system, the possibility of recovering the excess energy was detected,” the scientists explain.
An energy management system was used to perform peak saving, load shifting, and other unspecified energy management algorithms. The team explained that the new configuration of the photovoltaic system does not export energy to the grid and that all electricity generated is used on the site itself.
For the microgrid system, the researchers used a propeller-type turbine, known as PowerSpout LH, designed to be completely submerged in water. “The design of the filtration system was adjusted to adapt to the installation of the picohydroelectric unit, in order to maximize the available height, support the generators, protect from the harsh tropical environment and allow the safe operation of the equipment,” they stated.
The research group found that the picohydroelectric system was capable of recovering approximately 10% of the energy used to pump seawater. With a height of 2.3 m and a flow rate of 90 l/s, its continuous power ranged between 1.04 kW and 1.124 kW, and the recovered energy was to amount to 9,846 kWh per year. “This is a modest amount of energy, but equivalent to the use of an average Australian home, and an important measure in a suite of measures to reduce overall building energy consumption,” he stressed.
The scientists stated that the project was economically viable, with financial and non-financial benefits for the product life cycle. “Considering only the cost of electricity, the payback period is estimated at 8-10 years for this case,” they concluded. “Taking into account the indirect financial and non-financial benefits, the payback time is likely to be significantly shorter.” |
