Feasibility Study of Micro Hydro Energy Harvested from Water Pipeline

Throughout the whole day, water is being consumed by Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS residents in all domestic activities. As an average of 7.120 million liters of water has been used by UTP each year and has not being fully utilized by the institution to produce energy efficiently. High electricity demand for all economic purposes and increasing population, have forced UTP to find more electrical energy source. There is the way to utilize the kinetic energy in the water flowing in pipeline which is produce the electrical energy whenever water is being consumed. Hence, we can take the advantage from this situation. Moreover, the aim of this project is to do an innovation on the amount of power harvested from water flowing inside the water pipeline. There are three criteria such as velocity of water; rotational turbine and power generated were calculated by using the measurement values of water flow rate. Besides, the velocity of water is calculated based on the water flow rate measurement obtain from UTP pipeline. Simulation for power produced is calculated using MATLAB Simulink computer program and show the ability of the UTP water pipeline to produce electrical energy for institution consumption. Basically, the specification of turbine used depending on the flow rate and net head. From the study, it showed that construction of micro hydropower project was feasible in the project sites.