Interconnection of two micro hydro units forming a mini-grid system using soft connection

This paper presents the soft connection between two micro-hydro units forming a mini-grid system. It describes the operation and the design of the induction generator controller (IGC), used for the power balancing at varying consumers load as required for standalone micro-hydro generators and the synchronizer unit, used for the mini-grid interconnection. Three phase induction motors are used as single phase generators by using C-2C capacitor configuration for supplying single phase resistive load. This paper proposes a simple soft connection scheme based on classical zero crossing detector. Operation and experimental tests of IGC based mini-grid system with soft connection is also presented. Through the results it has been shown that the proposed model is feasible for rural electrification schemes.