Control of a run of river small hydro power plant

Nowadays, new small hydro power plants are being built all over the world. In most cases, these power plants lack significant storage capacity; therefore the more adequate control strategy is to keep constant the water level at the intake basin to capture the maximum amount of energy from the river flow. In this paper, the control of a diversion run of river hydro plant is considered. A practical criterion for tuning the gains of the PI controller is proposed. The influence of turbine operating point on controller gains is analyzed. Finally, the results are applied to a model of a typical hydropower plant to verify that the tuning of the PI controller allows a stable and suitable control of the power plant.