Monitoring of Micro-Hydro Power Plant Using Internet-of-Things (IoT)

Project Title

Monitoring of Micro-Hydro Power Plant Using Internet-of-Things (IoT)

Project Area of Specialization Internet of ThingsProject Summary

Currently most Micro-Hydro Power (MHP) plants are monitored manually in Pakistan. Due to this manual and archaic approach the Government agencies and regulatory authorities have no clue about the power generated from these MHP plants. For this purpose, we are proposing to monitor the MHPs using an automated system based on the IoT (Internet-of-Things) technology. In this approach the data from the plant will be sent directly to the headquarter of PEDO (Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organization) located at Peshawar using 3G/4G or SIM technology. It needs to be mentioned that currently 350 MHP plants are commissioned by PEDO in northern region of KPK, none of them are connected to the PEDO headquarter for monitoring purposes. Furthermore, another set of 750 will be installed by 2022 [1].

This project is a step towards transparency and ease of doing things. The sensors at MHP will monitor the current, voltage, flow of water, vibration of generator, temperature of bearings and finally the water level at tank. For this purpose, a microcontroller-based system has been designed. The data collected from all the sensors will be sent to the microcontroller and then finally to the PEDO headquarter using 3G/4G internet. If internet is not available, then SIM based messaging will be used. The dashboard developed will be used to display the data coming from different MHP plants at the PEDO HQ.

Project Objectives

The main objective of this project is to monitor the health of a power plant in real time. To see how much power can be generated using the available water. Furthermore, it will also report how much power is actually generated by the power plant. PEDO should be able to see multiple sites and monitor in real-time how much power is generated by the system.

We also plan to integrate the artificial intelligence for fault prediction. The input data for AI module will be vibration and temperature data coming from the generator. Based on the test data we will train our model.

Project Implementation Method

The block diagram of this project is shown below,

Figure 1: Block Diagram of IoT Module and Cloud infrastructure

As shown above in the figure, our project will consist of two major parts. One is the IoT Module and another one is the Software Module.

In IoT Module a microcontroller will be used to interface with six different sensors (shown in yellow) in Figure 1. The microcontroller used in this project will be Arduino UNO. It has been chosen because it has enough analog pins required for interfacing six sensors. Arduino will send the data of all sensors to the cellphone of an operator of MHP plant using Bluetooth interface. Similarly the same data will be sent to the Cloud using Wifi interface. The data from cloud will be displayed at the PEDO headquarter after post-processing and data analysis. If internet is not available in the area, then the data collected at the cellphone of operator will be sent using SIM technology. In worst case if even cellular network is not available then data collected in the cellphone of operator can be sent when the operator comes to a region (with cellular network) after a week or biweekly. In Future we plan to use AI modeling over this data for fault prediction in the generator. Details of different sensors is here,

Voltage sensor

For voltage sensing we plan to use ZMP101B. The ADC output is adjusted using the trimpot (potentiometer) to an appropriate value against a reference input.

Current Sensor

For current sensing we plan to use ACS712 sensor. It provides precise solutions for AC current sensing in industrial, commercial, and communications systems. The device protection allows for easy implementation. The output of this sensor is in analog format. It can be easily read using the ADC available in the Arduino UNO.

Accelerometer Sensor

 To measure the vibration of a generator in the MHP plant we need to use an accelerometer. For this purpose, we plan to use ADXL330 sensor. The ADXL330 is a complete 3-axis acceleration measurement system on a single monolithic IC. The ADXL330 has a measurement range of ±3 g minimum. It contains a polysilicon surface micromachined sensor and signal conditioning circuitry to implement an open-loop acceleration measurement architecture. The output signals are analog voltages that are proportional to acceleration. The accelerometer can measure the static acceleration of gravity in tilt sensing applications as well as dynamic acceleration resulting from motion, shock, or vibration.

Water Flow sensor

The water flow sensor will tell us how much water is flowing through the penstock from the Forebay to the powerhouse as shown in Figure 3.

Water Level Sensor

We need to determine how much stream water is coming to the forebay. For this purpose, we need to measure the level of water at the forebay as shown in figure 3. For this purpose, we plan to use the waterproof ultrasonic sensor JSN-SR04T.

Figure 3: Micro-hydro power plant (MHP)

Benefits of the Project

The major benefit is the transparency using automation. Human involvement has been minimized and the whole monitoring system is technology based. The Government agency (PEDO) will be able to see the actual power generation using our system. 

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

We plan to deliver the actual prototype at the end of Aug 2021. We will deploy the IoT module (or hardware) of prototype at one of the sites of MHP at Swat district in KPK region. Similarly, the dashboard will be deployed at the PEDO headquarter at Peshawar. A cellphone-based app will be delivered as well. This app will be android based. It will collect data from IoT module and send data to the PEDO HQ if Wi-Fi is not available as shown in Figure 1.

Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemCore Industry Energy Other Industries IT Core Technology Internet of Things (IoT)Other Technologies Artificial Intelligence(AI), Cloud InfrastructureSustainable Development Goals Affordable and Clean Energy, Climate ActionRequired Resources

Item Name	Type	No. of Units	Per Unit Cost (in Rs)	Total (in Rs)
			Total in (Rs)	80000
micrcontroller	Equipment	10	1000	10000
sensors	Equipment	20	1000	20000
cloud infrastructure	Equipment	1	10000	10000
cell phone	Equipment	1	15000	15000
LCD Display for dashboard	Equipment	1	15000	15000
travelling, survey and contingency	Miscellaneous	1	10000	10000