Despite the initiation of the master plan, envisioned by the government of Nepal, complete electrification of rural Nepal still seems over ambitious for quite a long time. Thus Micro Hydropower Plants (MHP) can still be very effective for rural electrification. Decades of manufacturing of same type turbines have saturated the turbine manufacturing industries of Nepal, which demands for some new innovations and that could be the introduction of Francis turbine in Nepalese MHP. It’s undeniable that there are umpteen opportunities for the turbine manufacturers to manufacture and install the Francis turbines in Nepalese MHP. The feasibility studies performed by different institutions and the government policy strengthen the claim. In addition to that, data received from, NMHDA and a local turbine manufacturing industry suggest that there are abundant sites suitable for installation of Francis turbine. This paper illustrates the need of introducing the Francis turbine in Nepalese MHP and discusses about the opportunities available for the turbine manufacturers to enter into the market of Francis turbines for micro hydro and subsequently for larger hydropower projects in the near future. The challenges associated with the introduction of Francis turbine in MHP are highlighted.

Pumps are the mechanical device used to increase the pressure energy of fluids. Pumps of different types and size are being used in Nepal, for different applications. Despite the wide spread applications of pumps not much have been done to manufacture pumps in Nepal. This study investigates the opportunity of manufacturing pumps in Nepal. It shows the history of usage of pumps in Nepal and also depicts the problems faced by the pumps used in different projects. It discusses about the current market trend related to the import of pumps from foreign countries and develops an argument to start a new business for manufacturing pumps. Role of research institutes like Turbine Testing Laboratory in design of pumps has been discussed as a future prospect for Nepalese academia and industry.

Designing and manufacturing site-specific turbines for small hydropower is not economical. Using abundantly available Pump, from the market, as Turbine (PAT) instead of designing a completely different turbine can be much more economical for small-scale hydropower. Lot of research have been going throughout the world on this and has already proven its effectiveness. In Nepalese hydropower, including the ones already developed and the ones that will be developed in the future, Francis turbines are supposedly the suitable turbine of choice. However, designing and manufacturing Francis turbine is a tedious task and the local manufacturers, who are expert in manufacturing Cross-flow turbines; do not have the technology and competence to manufacture the modern Francis turbines. Sediment in Himalayan rivers are the major hurdles of operation as they reduce the lifetime of the turbine by a very large factor, shooting up the maintenance cost of the hydropower. The operational region of Francis turbine and PAT overlaps quite a lot, thus indicating that PAT can be used in many of the hydropower in Nepal. The Chinese and Indian pump manufacturers are already renowned in developing a wide range of pumps and supplying them in Nepal. Despite having such great opportunity, pumps have never been used in turbine mode in Nepalese hydropower. In addition to that, no research has been done, in Nepal, regarding the effects of sediment on pumps being operated as pump or turbine. This paper describes performance of pump in erosive environment using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). It also compares the results obtained from the CFD analysis of sediment erosion in pump operated in pump mode as well as turbine mode with other researchers work. Finally, it compares the results obtained from the CFD with the results obtained from the experiment.

Pumps are widely used machinery in various applications. Mostly now, a day in importance is seen from household applications to different industrial level. Various types of pumps are available in the market according to their applications and centrifugal pumps are one of most common types among them. In the course of time, pumps faces various problems and repairing is required. Among them wear is one of the most common problem for reduction in pump performance. Cavitation, corrosion, erosion, fatigue are the common wear mechanisms faced by the centrifugal pumps. In order to minimize such problems frequent maintenance strategies are required. Various researchers have purposed different methodologies. Material properties, coatings in design and optimizing hydraulic and mechanical design for such challenges has been now a major topic of research. In this study, the different wear mechanisms and their causes with reference to various research paper is presented. Different effects for such problems is highlighted. Finally, new emerging technology developed by various researchers for minimizing such wear challenges are discussed.

PAT is typically employed as the electromechanical component, especially in the rural communities of developing countries in order to reduce the initial cost of a power plant. In the context of Nepal, there have been few researches about its feasibility but have given promising outcomes regarding its implementation. As a part of this continuation, this paper deals with the experimentation performed on end suction, KDS-520+ centrifugal pump of 3.5 kW on direct as well as reverse mode to study its performances. The main purpose of this study was to test the characteristic performance of the pump in turbine as well as pump mode to compare the variation in their efficiency in laboratory environment so as to shed light upon the importance of PAT in micro and mini hydropower and to study the prospect of replacing traditional water mills with PAT. The test rig for the operation of pump in turbine mode was developed as a part of the research and characteristic curves have been plotted on different flow rates. The efficiency of the centrifugal pump was found similar to the rated efficiency, 60.85% at the best efficiency point at the head of 17m and discharge of 17lps. In addition, performance of the same pump in turbine mode showed a maximum efficiency of 40.15% at flow of 11.5lps and head 10m which concluded that the centrifugal pump can operate in turbine mode without any modifications.