Mechanistic Model of an Air Cushion Surge Tank for Hydro Power Plants

Madhusudhan Pandey, Dietmar Winkler, Kaspar Vereide, Roshan Sharma and Bernt Lie
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Madhusudhan Pandey: Telemark Modeling and Control Center (TMCC), University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), 3918 Porsgrunn, Norway
Dietmar Winkler: Telemark Modeling and Control Center (TMCC), University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), 3918 Porsgrunn, Norway
Kaspar Vereide: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7034 Trondheim, Norway
Roshan Sharma: Telemark Modeling and Control Center (TMCC), University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), 3918 Porsgrunn, Norway
Bernt Lie: Telemark Modeling and Control Center (TMCC), University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), 3918 Porsgrunn, Norway

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 8, 1-15

Abstract: Due to the increasing use of renewable energy sources, and to counter the effects of fossil fuels, renewable dispatchable hydro power can be used for balancing load and generation from intermittent sources (solar and wind). During higher percentage change in load acceptance or rejection in the intermittent grid, the operations of surge tanks are crucial in terms of water mass oscillation and water hammer pressure, and to avoid wear and tear in actuators and other equipment, such as hydro turbines. Surge tanks are broadly classified as open types, with access to open air, and closed types, with a closed volume of pressurized air. Closed surge tanks are considered to have a more flexible operation in terms of suppressing water mass oscillation and water hammer pressure. In this paper, a mechanistic model of an air cushion surge tank (ACST) for hydro power plants is developed based on the ordinary differential equations (ODEs) for mass and momentum balances. The developed mechanistic model of the ACST is a feature extension to an existing open-source hydro power library—OpenHPL. The developed model is validated with experimental data from the Torpa hydro power plant (HPP) in Norway. Results show that the air friction inside the ACST is negligible as compared to the water friction. The results also indicate that a hydro power plant with an ACST is a potential candidate as a flexible hydro power in an interconnected power system grid supplied with intermittent energy sources. Conclusions are drawn based on the simulation results from hydraulic performance of the ACST.

Keywords: air cushion surge tank (ACST); air friction model; flexible hydro power plants; mechanistic model; OpenHPL (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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