Alexandrew, a Romanian student doing an internship in the GEII department at the IUT in Béthune, has a keen interest in small-scale hydroelectric power plants, a field in which he is actively involved in partnership with a company that specializes in the manufacture of hydraulic turbines.
Under the guidance of François Maeght, Maxime Dufossé, Ahmed Belkadir, and Rémus Pusca, he devoted his internship to modeling an asynchronous generator in MATLAB, which he then compared with practical tests conducted at the IUT’s energy laboratory.
To give this project a practical dimension, our teachers took him on a tour of several mills in the region. Among them were the Fouquereuil mill, which is currently being restored to working order, as well as two other fully operational sites that are controlled autonomously via smartphone: the Blangy-sur-Ternoise mill and the Pidoux mill in Hallines.
Xavier Lombard opened the doors to his mill in Blangy-sur-Ternoise, which is equipped with a vertical-axis Francis turbine generating 30 kW of power. Next, Vivien Lombard welcomed Alexandrew and the teachers to the Pidoux mill, which is equipped with a Sagebien-type waterwheel generating 37 kW of power.
This was sure to amaze our Romanian intern, who will be leaving the IUT at the end of May. A big thank you to Xavier and Vivien for their warm welcome and generosity!
