Design of a star-hexagon transformer based electronic load controller for isolated pico hydro generating system

This paper presents a design of an isolated star/hexagon transformer based ELC (electronic load controller) to regulate voltage and frequency of an isolated asynchronous generator (IAG) driven by a stand-alone uncontrolled pico-hydro turbine feeding three-phase four-wire loads. The proposed ELC is used to control frequency and voltage of IAG despite frequent change in consumer loads. Such an ELC is having a capability of feeding the power to the consumer loads, more than the IAG power rating. This is realised using an isolated star/hexagon transformer with a voltage source converter (VSC) and a battery at its DC bus. The proposed generating system with ELC is modeled and simulated in MATLAB along with Simulink and Simpower system (SPS) toolboxes. The obtained results are presented to demonstrate the performance of an IAG feeding three-phase four-wire loads with the neutral current compensation.