PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT AND UPGRADING OF WALGA MICRO-HYDRO POWER STATION

This research deals with the performance assessment and upgrading of Walga micro hydro
power plant owned by government and fitted with cross flow turbine. Walga site is located in
Oromia Regional State, South West Shoa zone, Wonchi Woreda Azer_Keransa Kebele. Walga
site is located in a remote area. Currently, even though the village has the opportunity to get
power from micro hydro power plant that was installed in 2014 by the Ministry of Water,
Irrigation and Electricity, still the plant lacks reliability, sustainability and safety problems. The
key reasons for the performance assessment and up grading of the existing Walga micro hydro
power station were to know the efficiencies (turbine and unit efficiencies) and to determine the
electrical power output of the plant. And also to know the power demand gap between supply
side from the existing micro hydro power generator and demand side obtained from the village
power demand assessment during the field survey. Therefore, performance assessment and
testing, power need assessment of the community, determination of the power gap between the
supply side from the existing Walga micro hydro power station and demand side were the
purpose of this thesis work.
In this study, performance assessment of existing Walga micro hydro power station was carried
out and performance indicators were identified. Based on the performance test results and the
village power demand assessment findings, the power demand gap of Walga village was known.,
Two options were proposed to meet the power demand gap of the village. The first option is
developing a PV/micro hydro hybrid power supply system and the second option is developing
micro hydro resource existing at the site