Development of Micro Hydro Turbines as Renewable Energy Applications for Educational Purposes

Energy is a priority to guarantee economic development and a good standard of living; however, current production and consumption models have become unsustainable. Hydropower is a renewable energy, that helps the problems that are caused by climate change, with a mature technology (turbines are based on designs nearly a century old) and of high global efficiencies. The novelty in hydroelectricity has now a lot to do with its scale. The development of small-scale hydroelectric power plants is growing up in Argentina. Since 2012, in the School of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of the University of Córdoba (Argentina) we have been developing projects designing micro-turbines so that they could be manufactured in local workshops. These designs should guarantee low costs (even sacrificing efficiency) in order to allow decentralized energy supply in communities that cannot be linked to the national interconnected system. The machines developed were four: Michell Banki (working power: 18 kW), an axial turbine (working power: 2 kW), Turgo (theoretical power: 2.55 kW) and Pelton (working power: 1 kW). In this work, the design and numerical modeling used to make the turbines more efficient with the limitations of simplicity imposed on the schemes and the results are shown.