Our Products - The Hydropak
The concept has emerged to meet the changing nature of the market for mini-hydro turbines in Europe and overseas. In the traditional planning of hydropower developments, public power companies have looked for high efficiency, maximum energy capture, and installing as bi a capacity as possible at a specific site. Turbines were therefore customized to meet the needs of each site. The market is changing. Privatised utilities and private investors are now seeking first and foremost high returns and low risk on their investments. This is leading to smaller installed capacities, high load factor installations and a demand for cost effective, rather than optimally efficient, turbines. Developers have discovered that the extra kWh’s obtained by maximizing a site’s potential require a disproportionately high investment. The concept of a packaged turbine is targeted to meet these changing market requirements. The versatility and relative simplicity of the Crossflow turbine are ideal for this packaged approach, although now proven for the Crossflow, this approach has also been adapted for Francis, Pelton and now the Turgo turbine types.
The Crossflow is the least efficient of modern-day turbines (i.e. compared with Pelton, Turgo, Francis and Kaplan) and hence has largely been ignored by the traditional hydro industry. It was invented in Europe in the early 20th century and came to prominence principally in developing countries as a low-cost turbine suitable for local manufacture. However, the Crossflow is significantly less complex to manufacture than other turbines, maintains a good efficiency at part-flow, and is applicable to the broadest range of head and flow of all turbines.
The Benefits · Lower installation costs · Pre-wired and factory tested · Reduces on-site civil costs · Reduces commissioning costs · Competitive cost through standardization · Minimised power house footprint
Related Projects
