Theoretical Study of Producing Sustainable Electrical Energy via Hydraulic Energy

Abstract

Over the last decade, the Libyan National Power Grid has significantly suffered from negligence and vandalisms, which led to severe materialistic damage to power generation units, transmission networks, distribution subsystems and power plants fuel shortage. These happen because of the security incidents and armed clashes within the country. This has placed the electrical power grid in a difficult and critical situation leading to a large deficit in meeting the demand for electricity use, therefore consequence to power cuts for long time.

However, the Libyan Man-Made River LMMR is considered as the world largest irrigation project, consisting of a large network of pipes that supplies water from Libyan Desert in the south to the coastal areas in the north. This water movement crossing mountains and various land orientations from the south to the north of the country has a huge kinetic energy as a result.

This paper is examined the possibility of taking advantage of the water flow energy through the Libyan western mountains to generate energy (producing electricity through water movement) by using an appropriate size of turbine. The work has been theoretically undertaken the opportunity of producing a clean and relatively cheap energy in the area of Abuzian near Tarhuna city. Moreover, the research is based-on realistic currently available data in term of the water flow-rate, the pipe diameter, the area orientations, and the pipeline slopes as well as the dimensions of the existing reservoirs. In summary, this research on the proposed area has suggested the required designs and calculations for selecting a turbine and an appropriate generator. As a result, the research has showed promising potential of producing 39.5 MW of the turbine power output and a net electrical producing energy of 29 MW and the generator overall efficiency is 73% through this area in the west of Libya.