Experimental Study of Hydrokinetic Power Generation System Integration – Straight Blade Cascaded (SBC) Vertical Axis Darrieus Turbine

Abstract

The utilization of hydrokinetic energy as renewable energy is an effort in meeting the increasing demand for energy. The development of vertical axis hydrokinetic turbine straight blade cascaded (VAHT-SBC) at previous research has successfully extract energy with high-performance coefficients. However, the developed VAHT-SBC has not yet been integrated with generators as a power system generator. This research was conducted experimentally on an open channel, including an integrated system designed using VAHT-SBC and Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG) with a belt-pulley mechanism. The result shows the proportional relation of generator rotational speed to voltage and frequency. On the contrary, the generated voltage experience drop due to the loading in the integration system. The value of the voltage and frequency of inverter is not affected by rotational speed and load. The resulting inverter voltage has a value of 230 V and a frequency of 56 Hz. The installation of the integration system on hydrokinetic turbines prototype with the current velocity of 0.82 m s$^{–1}$ and 0.92 m s$^{–1}$ could produce 50 W of power.