Abstract
Small hydro power, among other renewable energy resources, has been evaluated to have enough development value because it is a clean, renewable and abundant energy resource. In addition, small hydro power has the advantage of low cost development by using existing facilities like sewage treatment plants, water works and similar resources. But in the case of small hydro power systems, there are problems with degraded operation efficiency of turbine due to changes in flow rates. In order to overcome this, variable speed control can be achieved by using the power rectifier and permanent magnetic synchronous generator(PMSG) as a possible method to respond to the changes in flow rates. In this study, a commercial ANSYS CFD code was used to analyze the performance of 10kW class propeller hydro turbine and to also investigate flow characteristics at variable flow rates and runner vane.
