Abstract

Micro-hydropower plants are very applicable in rural and off-grid areas where water resources become available. This is because they can be installed with fraction of the cost as compared to large hydropower plants or even grid extension. Also in rural and off-grid areas, the population density is small and very sparsely distributed which makes it un-economical for the development of large electricity supply projects. In this case the mini and micro energy projects are the suitable technology to be used to supply power to the consumer load demand in the rural and off-grid areas. One of the sustainable ways to do is to use the available water resources like small rivers to develop micro-hydropower plants. The effective use of water from local rivers to develop micro-hydropower plants have proven to be sustainable way of electricity generation. But despite all these positive outcomes, studies have shown that many of the available rural areas micro-hydropower potential sites are facing reduced water volumetric flow due to irrigation activities and also lack high site heads due to the nature of the landscape. In this case, the development of a micro-hydropower for electricity generation is limited to specific type of hydro turbine technology called crossflow turbine. This is because this type turbine technology can accommodate wider range of flow discharge and head values in the micro and mini scale of hydropower technology range. The crossflow turbines can also be manufactured locally and adapted to the local rural environments and also have been proven to be very robust with less operational and maintenance costs. Thus why there is a need to customize this technology in the local rural area in terms of turbine design in order to standardize the local manufacturing and this is the main motivation that this design study have been addressing.

Keywords: Crossflow; Hhaynu; Micro-hydropower; Hydro turbine; Mbulu; Tanzania