No abstract

Rwanda is among the least developed countries on the globe with total access to electricity not exceeding 63%, where the rest of the population lives in areas with no access to electricity. One such a place, which is the focus of this research, is Musanze district (1.4919 S, 29.5572 E), where 60% of the population in this area are located in remote areas, which makes the task of their electrification via grid system very difficult. Micro hydropower has been developed so far to reduce the deficit of energy access in this area. However, the power generated is not enough to cover the area, and the major problem is the decrease in river water level in the dry season, which affects the power generation. In this work, the feasibility of a hybrid PV/hydroelectric supply system is studied and optimized to increase the number of homes accessing electricity in this area. A 200 kW Mutobo micro hydro system in Musanze district under operation is considered a case study where a 100 kW PV array tied to the micro hydropower system is designed. The optimized PV-hydro hybrid system was proposed using a modified P and O MPPT algorithm to enhance the PV-generated power. The model was designed and simulated using MATLAB/Simulink, and data recorded from Mutobo micro hydropower station, Rwanda Energy Group, and National Meteorological Agency were used to estimate solar energy potentials. The results showed that the hybrid PV/hydro system is feasible and effectively contributes to the power shortage mitigation in remote areas during the dry season.

High voltage AC (HVAC) power lines can induce significant amount of voltages on underground gas/oil metal pipelines in areas where they share similar Right of Way (RoW), the situation becoming serious particularly in case of fault conditions. Electromagnetic field generated by the HVAC power lines on these pipelines, generate unwanted voltages which present threats to the pipeline and its associated protective equipment such as cathodic systems. The aim of this research is to compute induced voltage on pipeline running parallel to HVAC power lines. The study was conducted using CDEGS software package and revealed that under steady state condition, results were in agreement with GB 6830-1986 standard. However, high currents are generated under single phase to ground short circuit rising the potential of adjacent soil including the underground pipeline beyond limits. Therefore, the gradient control wire mitigation technique is proposed to reduce these voltages to safe limits.

No abstract

No abstract