1. Introduction A Pico-hydro means a plant of small power, having about 10 kW.

The Pico-hydro power plants represent lately the biggest challenges in clean energy generation, due to the following advantages: Require water sources of low flow and fall; Dont need big investments; Are environment friendly from the equipment point of view; Are very useful for isolated areas; Can autonomously function; Can be easily used by anybody.

The important elements of a Pico-hydro plant, as shown in fig.1, are: water tank and vane; supply pipe; hydro turbine; DC generator and controller.

Fig.1. Pico-hydro power plant diagram Many times, the Pico-hydro plants are used together with other power plants, like wind turbine or solar photovoltaic panels. In this case, all the power plants are connected on a common DC power bus. These sources charge the same batteries. There is also necessary a DC/AC inverter, having the network voltage and frequency, for instance 220V/50Hz.

In this analysis we will consider the above case of a DC generator with a common power bus. The Pico-hydro can be considered as a system with the block diagram from fig.2.

Fig.2. Pico-hydro system block diagram The water tank has as input a qx uncontrollable flow and as output a vane that controls the h water level in the tank, producing a qv controllable flow. There are two water levels in the tank: the minimum N0 level and the maximum N1 level. The water level h must be controlled by the on/off position x of the vane between these two levels. The second element is the turbine supply pipe that has as input the h level and as output the hy pressure at the bottom of the pipe, producing a qT flow. The third component is the hydro turbine, which is a nonlinear element, having as input the hy pressure and as outputs the MT torque and the T speed. The DC generator is a nonlinear element, too. The inputs of the generator are the MT torque, the T speed, the control flux and the output is the DC power P. The controller has two inputs, the h pressure and the T speed and two outputs, one for on/off control of the vane and the other for generator flux control. 2. Problem Formulation In this section we will model and simulate all the components of the Pico-hydro power plant. First we will model the hydraulic part, consisting of water tank, controlled vane and supply pipe. Then, we will model the electro-mechanical part, consisting of hydraulic turbine and DC generator. 2.1. Hydraulic part model First, we will write the mathematical model for the water tank. Considering the volume V, surface S and level h of the tank, we can write the relationship. 2.2. Electro-mechanical part model This includes the mathematical model of the hydraulic turbine and the DC generator.