Variable speed alternator for hydro project

Hello all, I am building a hydro kinetic turbine to power a 20 kva alternator. To accommodate the fluctuations in the river flow speed what alternator would be best suited? Thanks. Nick

20,000W per hour
480,000WHr per day
14,400,000WHr per month.

What do you plan on using this much power to operate.

Hello S Bengi, all sorts of agriculture equipment from irrigation pumps to mills and domestic.

What does the delta look like.

In the "Wet" season how gallons/min do you have and how about in the "dry" season.
How much head do you have?

Which type of turbine are you thinking about using Waterwheel, Impulse or Reaction turbine.
Any particular sub-type.

As to your original question because you are generating over 15KW you are going to have to go with a synchronous alternator (due to capacitor size). Most likely a 4-pole 1800rpm one. With a synchronous alternator you are also going to need a ELC (Electronic Load Controller)


Check out this article for some cool info
http://www.oregon.gov/energy/renew/hydro/docs/microhydroguide.pdf

Thank you S Bengi, a useful link. This is a pilot project, the turbine is a hydro kinetic prototype, in other words it is designed to operate purely on natural flow so there is no head of water. It has been successfully tested to 5 kw. It is not yet patented due to lack of funding so I cannot give away anything more here on its design.

hello if you plan to use a synchronous , which I find very good for hydro , watch my videos , for information on ELC mos power or IGBT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO6zmPsk6EE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w16StyKLkvA

A waterwheel turbine is usually only good up to 5KW. You might have to setup a couple of them in series/parallel to get up to 20KW. Having a string of them that you can independently turn on and off will also allow you to handle the varing flow rate.