Abstract
People living in rural and remote areas of Sub-
Saharan Africa generally lack access to electricity due to their
geographical location and the costs associated with connecting
these areas to the national electrical grid. A viable technology to
supply electricity to some of these areas are stand-alone microhydropower
systems which harnesses energy from flowing water.
Self-excited induction generators (SEIGs) are commonly used for
the generation of electricity in stand-alone micro-hydropower
systems. The electricity supplied by a SEIG to the demand
side i.e. the load needs to be maintained stable under various
consumer load conditions. This is accomplished through the use
of an electronic load controller (ELC). This paper presents the
design and development of an intelligent ELC that is able to
maintain stable voltage on the demand side of a 3-phase SEIG
supplying varying single-phase consumer loads. The proposed
intelligent ELC consists of an uncontrolled bridge rectifier,
filtering capacitor, chopper switch, voltage sensor, optocoupler,
Arduino microcontroller and a ballast load or storage, depending
on site-specific requirements and economic viability. The fuzzy
logic control method is implemented to maintain stable and
reliable voltage. The ELC is designed and simulated under
various consumer load conditions in Matlab/Simulink. Simulation
results of the ELC model are verified experimentally in a
laboratory setting. The proposed intelligent ELC will contribute
towards providing reliable and cost-effective means of enhancing
the proliferation of micro-hydropower particularly in rural and
remote applications in Sub-Saharan Africa.