Experimental Characterization of a Micro-Turbine Generator for Energy Recovery Applications

Micro-turbine generators (MTG) represent a useful and promising mean to achieve energy recovery in distributed generation power systems. In order to fully exploit their potential a detailed knowledge of their design and off-design performance must be gained, in order to properly plan their control strategy and achieve an effective integration in the power system and an optimization of its components. In the present work, electrical measurements have been carried out to characterize a commercial MTG 3-phase power output and therefore, its overall performance. An inverter was adopted to control the turbine rotating speed, through the variation of the breaking load, and its behavior was evaluated as well. Special attention was paid to provide a MTG regulation strategy that allows to maximize the specific output power, for the required load, by regulating the turbine speed. Proof-of-concept evaluations revealed that the developed strategy allows to reduce the compressed air consumption, with respect to a baseline fixed-speed regulation, and therefore optimize the power system characteristics.