Grid Tie for Pico Hydro

Hello Everyone,

I'm an engineer working here in Bali about to roll out 20 x 50kW hydro electric plants. The units are low head (6M) & high volume (1k6 l/s) semi kaplan (boat propeller) types ideally suited to our irrigation system here known as "The Subak".

Some of the installations are multiples of the same unit (up to 5 x 50kW) as our flows vary during the year according to our rainfalls. For example just now it is the end of the "dry" season here so we have around 2 kl/s in one of our rivers. Another has 3 kL/s. Another has exactly 955 l/s. Therefore at some locations we will bring on turbines as we have flow.

All this is self funding as we sell the current generated back to Power Indonesia over a formula derived from many co efficients.

My concept at this stage is to grid tie using tapping 380v, 3 phase to 20kV 3 phase transformers and bring the load online (post syncronisation with Power Indonesia) incrementally using a motor triven tap (if you will) which governs an appropriate amount of water entering the turbine chamber.

My questions to the forum are twofold:

First: of course I can buy a hugely expensive ABB 'synchroniser", however I'd rather not, so does anyone have an idea how this can be done ecoomically?

Second: does anyone know how to (inexpensively) tie in the load balancing?

Thanks in advance

mark@slats.net