A Cost-Effective Control System of the Biogas-Based Electrical Generator

Increment of energy consumption in a fast-developing country like Vietnam has put high pressure on conventional power generation such as thermal power and hydroelectricity. In order to supplement energy demand, renewable energy sources are playing crucial roles. Among those sources, biogas energy has great potential, especial in livestock farm, for its ability to convert waste into heat and electricity. In this work, a control system has been developed to facilitate the operation of a biogas-based electrical generator. Self-customized generator of 25–100 kW is used to supply power to a hog farm. As the biogas production which is impacted by the livestock and the electrical load may vary over the time, it is required to manage the system in such a way that it can stabilizes the generator speed and thus its output power frequency. In this paper, we present a control system equipped with an industrial programmable logic controllers (PLC) and adopting PID algorithm which has been integrated to the biogas-based generators. The self-developed biogas base generation systems have been deployed in a few hog farms in the rural area of northern Vietnam. The experimental results have shown that the control system is able to supply power to the farm with stable frequency within 49.5 and 50.5 Hz while the load varies.