Design and improvement of the micro hydro power system at kampung semulong ulu

• Main Author: Law, Chee Seong.
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) 2012
• Subjects: T Technology (General)
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/20334/1/Chee.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/20334/5/Law%20Chee%20Seong.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/20334/

Micro hydropower project is one of the important projects for the underserved community in Sarawak. It is aimed to provide the electricity to the communities that live in rural area. Micro hydropower energy is considered as one of the renewable energy besides solar energy, wind energy, biomass and so on. However, the Sarawak government is giving the priority to the development of hydropower energy because Sarawak is blessed with constant volume of rainfall every year. Besides, most of the underserved community in Sarawak is located in the hilly and mountainous area, thus all these conditions makes it best suited for hydropower development. In this research, concentration was given to Kampung Semulong Vlu, Sri Aman, Sarawak which already started their own hydropower project. This villages consists of 25 Iban families with total 93 people inhabits a 143 metre long house. They are depends on the diesel generator and solar energy to produce electricity for their daily needs. The community here is still dependent on agriculture such as planting rice fields, rubber taping and fishing. The objective in this research is to study the site condition such as head measurements, stream discharge and calculate the output power of the hydropower system. Besides, the study also concentrates on how to improve and modify the current hydropower system to increase the power generation. Current micro hydropower system at Kampung Semulong Vlu is able to generate 4.58kW of power with flow rate of 0.0 149m3Is and 31.32 meter net head at the end of penstock. However, if the improvement been made by shifting the location of reservoir to higher ground, the expected power output will be increased from 4.58kW to 11.42kW due to the increment ofnet head from 31.32 meter to 56.77 meter.