SWABI, March 13: The Pakistan Council for Renewable Energy Technologies (PCRET), KSB Germany and Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology have been working on a joint project to use the commercially-available pumps in the reverse mode in order to generate electricity.

In this regard, Project Manager Small Hydropower, KSB, Germany, Sander Klos along with Valentin Schnitzer representative of GTZ and two Pakistani officials of the KSB Pakistan visited the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the GIK Institute on Tuesday.

Dr M. Sultan Khan, who coordinated the visit, said the objective of the research project was to deal with the problem of providing electricity to off-grid locations in the country by using commercially-available pumps to generate electrical power. Small waterfalls in the existing canals in rural areas would be used to run these pumps as turbines to generate electricity.

“This is a major step in the field of micro-hydro power stations which would save the cost of fuel associated with thermal power plants,” said Dr Khan. “Micro-hydro power plants usually cater to the needs of the people living in remote and far-flung areas where the existing waterfalls can be utilized.”

Mr Klos, an expert in the field of using pumps in turbine mode, also gave a presentation in which the use of water pumps as turbine was highlighted. He went through different possibilities and scales to generate electricity by hydropower; such as use of hydropower in ancient times, pump as turbine application for energy recovery, tidal energy, design of small hydropower plants and hydroelectric system.

“To produce energy we are wasting its huge quality and we are looking for protecting this energy and provision of low-priced energy,” he said.

He said: “Hydropower is also vital for reduction of pollution in the environment.”

Mr Klos along with the researchers of the GIK Institute also visited a site near Mardan where work is in progress on a similar micro-hydro power project.