International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics

Volume 116 No. 21 2017, 291-296

ISSN: 1311-8080 (printed version); ISSN: 1314-3395 (on-line version)
url: http://www.ijpam.eu
Special Issue
ijpam.eu

MODIFIED TECHNIQUE FOR GATE VALVE CONTROL OF MICRO HYDRO POWER PLANT
USING FUZZY LOGIC CONTROLLER

1
Sukanya Kandaswamy, 2Vijayakumar Ponnusamy
12
Karpagam College of Engineering, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
1
sukanyakce14@gmail.com

Abstract: This paper presents an artificial intelligence Hence, it becomes necessary to develop a
technique for automatic gate valve control of Micro- suitable Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC) based controller
Hydro Power Plant (MHPP). Unlike the conventional P for MHPP to adjust the varying system parameters
and PI controller, the proposed fuzzy logic controller according to the load requirement [3]. It is also
provides a good performance characteristic to the non- designed to adjust the proportional gain (Kp) and
linear changing parameters of the system. Further, the integral gain (Ki) of a PI controller based on the error
designed controller maintains the smooth on/off control and derivative of error.
of gate valve positions of hydro power plant depending The proposed work focuses to maintain a
on the load demand. The proposed system is modeled constant frequency with a short stabilizing time for any
and simulated using MATLAB/Simulink environment. operating conditions, even for large step changes in the
An experimental result of a prototype confirms the power consumption. Secondly, it manages the flow of
good behavior of system. water by controlling gate opening positions of the
wickets according to the electrical power demand of the
Keywords: Micro hydro power plant, Gate valve customer.
control, Fuzzy logic control The organization of the paper is as follows.
Section 3 describes the nonlinear mathematical model
1. Introduction of MHPP. Section 4 describes the proposed FLC based
controller. Finally, simulation results are discussed in
Micro-hydro power is one of the important cost Section 5.
effective renewable energy technologies that can fill the
gap between the supply and energy demand to rural 2. Nomenclature
areas [1]. Micro Hydro Power Plants are usually
constructed in villages where there is run-off river. In ho initial steady state head, m
addition, MHPP are often isolated from grid networks h hydraulic head at gate, m
and plays a vital role for increasing rural electrification h1 head loss due to friction in conduit
in the developing nations [9]. Loads connected to the A penstock cross section area
generators expect a continuous power supply at rated L conduit length, m
frequency. MHPPs are characterized by non-linear G ideal gate opening
parameters like damping constants where constant At turbine gain
control does not ensure the desired performance under q turbine flow
different operating conditions [4]. Often the majority of qn1 no load water flow
proposed hydro power plants are modeled with linear Pt turbine power, W
equations and it is found to be valid only for load Pe electrical power, W
disturbance of ± 25% of rated load. With technology
J∆ moment of inertia of generator and
advancements, automated load controllers are used in
turbine
order to maintain constant frequency of MHPP [6].
Ct turbine torque, N.m
From [2] it reveals that when related to other
Ce resistant torque, N.m
power plants, MHPP are low cost and small sized
plants extremely suitable to serve a smaller community Ω angular velocity of generator, rad/s
people. Due to the strong deviating nature of MHPP, it Ωtm nominal speed of the turbine, rad/s
is not feasible to validate good stability with the use of
PI or PID at all operating ranges because linear models
are written by linearizing the differential equations to
describe the dynamic performance of the power system
for different operating conditions [9]. MHPP allows the
rapid adjustment of output power with varying peak
load conditions [8].

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3. Mathematical model of MHPP command signal serves to produce a change in gate

valve position [7].
3.1 Nonlinear Turbine model The transfer function of the PID controller is

The characteristics of per unit turbine flow in terms of =K + +K s (4)

water time constant and head is given by
Eq.(1).Figure.1 shows the turbine model.
1.1 3.3 Synchronous generator model
= h −h−h (1) For most of the dynamic studies in power system,
synchronous model is used widely. The Eq.(5) relates
The flow rate at the turbine is given by Eq. (2) the mechanical torque and the resistant torque
q = G√h (2)
Ω
J∆ . ! = C − C# (5)
The mechanical power produced at the turbine under
The above equation can be written as
steady state operation is given by Eq. (3)
$! %$& Ω!
P =A h q−q (3) Ω!
= J∆ . (6)
Eq.(7) represents the mechanical torque (Ta)
3.2 Governor model
)*
T( = (7)
The function of governor is to control the speed and/or +∆ .Ω-!,
load through the feedback signal to control the gate
valve position in order to regulate the flow of water
flow through the penstock under any electrical load
variations [4].
In the existing method as shown in Figure.2, the
governor is provide with PID controllers and its

Figure 1. Mathematical model of turbine

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Figure 2. Governor model
Figure 3. Proposed MHHP fuzzy model
4. Modelling of fuzzy logic controller
The proposed model of a MHPP is shown in Figure.3.
The FLC based controllers provides satisfactory results
for an unknown non-linear system by maintaining the
operating point in the stable region compared with
classical PID controllers which shows high
performance only for one unique point [5]. Also it
offers a convenient ways to incorporate heuristic laws
into an easy human understanding form.
The FLC incorporates the human-like
reasoning style of fuzzy systems through the use fuzzy
sets and a linguistic model consisting of a set of IF-
THEN fuzzy rules. The various steps like fuzzification,
fuzzy rule base, fuzzy inference and defuzzification
involved in the design of FLC are discussed below.
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4.1 Fuzzification
Two inputs variables of FLC are the error, e(t) and
derivative of error, de(t). These input variables are
mathematically represented by the Eq.(8) and Eq.(9).
e t = r t −y t (8)
de t = e t − e t − 1 (9)
where r(t) is the desired output value and y(t) is the
output of the controller. e(t) and de(t) are the two fuzzy
sets defined for fuzzification. Fuzzy sets are
membership functions and of three types namely
triangular, bell shaped and trapezoidal. In this paper,
the triangular membership function is arranged to
presume that for any particular input there is only one
dominant fuzzy subset.
International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

The input membership functions are chosen to be Table 1. Rule base

uniformly distributed five triangular functions. The
output membership functions are chosen to be non-
uniformly distributed seven triangular functions in e(t)
order to minimize the computation time. The range of u(t)
VL L N H VH
the input and output membership function is chosen to VL NL NM NM NS Z0
be -5 to +5. Input scaling factors are used to normalize L NM NM NS Z0 PS
the input magnitude. The linguistic variables assigned de(t) N NM NS Z0 PS PM
to Mamdani type fuzzy logic controller are: Very Low H NS Z0 PS PM PL
(VL), Low (L), Normal (N), High (H), Very High VH Z0 PS PM PM PM
(VH), Negative Large (NL), Negative Maximum (NM),
Negative Small (NS), Zero (Z), Positive Large (PL),
Positive Small (PS) and Positive Maximum (PM). The
membership function for error and derivative of error is
shown in Figure.4 and Figure.5.

Figure 6. Surface view of 25 FLC rules

Figure 4. Membership function of error
used in this proposed model is Centre of Area (COA)
method. The centroid method selects the output crisp
4.2 Rule base formation
value corresponding to the centre of gravity of the
output membership function. The output membership
Once the fuzzification process is completed, these
function is shown in Fig.7
results are used to form the fuzzy rule base. The fuzzy
rules are generally IF and THEN statements combined
by AND aggregation. Table 1 shows the rule base of
the proposed model. It consists of 25 rules and Figure.6
shows the surface structure of rules.

4.3 Defuzzification

Figure 7. Membership function of output function

5. Simulation result

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed

Figure 5. Membership function of derivative of error
A defuzzification is the process of producing the
crisp control action from the output of the fuzzy control
action. Defuzzification method
method, simulation is carried out using MATLAB
Simulink. Fig.8 shows the performance of fuzzy based
system in comparison with the PID controller for
nonlinear changes in load conditions. The result shows
that the proposed method ensures the stability of the
MHPP for the nonlinear behavior of the water level as
well as the sudden changes in load conditions.

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From the result it is clear that the time taken by
conventional PID controller to respond to the error
signal for the varying load conditions is high and also
the tuning of PID controller is quite not easy to obtain
the steady state condition. So when compared to
conventional PID controller, it proves to provide
smooth opening and closing of gate wicket positions
and also ensures closed loop stability, good transient
and steady state response at all operating conditions.
Figure 8. Performance comparison of PID and
proposed fuzzy controller
6. Hardware implementation
The proposed method is implemented and tested using
PIC 16F877 micrcontroller. PIC is used to control the
valve opening and closing position based on the inputs.
The output is taken to the gear motor which rotates in
response to the control signal from fuzzy controller and
adjusts the gate valve position according to the
direction of gear motor rotation. Figure.9 shows the
prototype model.
Figure 9. Hardware model
7. Conclusion
This paper proposed a fuzzy logic controller that adapts
to non-linear changing parameters of the systems with
smooth gain adjustment. The simulation results reveals
that smooth automatic adjustment of servomotor gate
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valve position can be done according to the load
requirements without any human intervention. It is seen
that the use of proposed fuzzy logic controller in micro
hydro power plants minimizes the maintenance cost,
thus reducing the overall running costs of the plant.
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