Water power?
- Thread starter Minotaur
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Have been contemplating it for a bit.
I think someone will be along shortly to advise you probably need ( officially ) certain paperwork to place something in a stream/river etc.
Washing Machine Micro HEP
I have an old washing machine and access to a decent fast running stream that falls parallel to the property - for educational purposes only I would quite like to install a micro HEP and see what electricity I could produce. Anyone done anything along these lines before and can offer any tips...
bushcraftuk.com
I do wonder why no one has made something from a gravity feed which might make more sense than solar for us.
By Solar do you mean Solar thermal ? or Photo Voltaic?
What do you mean by Gravity Feed please?
Watch Kris harbour on youtube he has a fantastic setup all homemade iirc
Sorry, I went away from my original thought this part might even be for a separate thread.
The thought hit me that I have a gravity feed water filter so I wonder could you add something in that line to generate electricity.
That was what I was thinking of. Thanks am now scribed. It seems a bit of an obvious one for us in the UK.
Say nothing. Interference with salmon bearing waters. We have huge hydroelectric power projects done, under construction and more to come.
The darling of the business here these days are the little (5 MW) "Run Of The River" hydro projects. The local ones feed the grid and feed the village if we can isolate in times of long distance failures.
What pisses me off is the need to fill the valleys with towers, poles and big fat cables. Take all your pictures now, kids. The Holmes is about to look like your back alley in the village.
I know what you want. Those little mid-night hydro plants are here, scattered up and
beyond where the regulators look.
The darling of the business here these days are the little (5 MW) "Run Of The River" hydro projects. The local ones feed the grid and feed the village if we can isolate in times of long distance failures.
What pisses me off is the need to fill the valleys with towers, poles and big fat cables. Take all your pictures now, kids. The Holmes is about to look like your back alley in the village.
I know what you want. Those little mid-night hydro plants are here, scattered up and
beyond where the regulators look.
All discussed exactly a year ago.
If you do not have a 'head' of water or a large flow rate (or, ideally both) you will not generate meaningful power. Lighting LED's is simple, boiling your kettle isn't.
bushcraftuk.com
If you do not have a 'head' of water or a large flow rate (or, ideally both) you will not generate meaningful power. Lighting LED's is simple, boiling your kettle isn't.
Washing Machine Micro HEP
I have an old washing machine and access to a decent fast running stream that falls parallel to the property - for educational purposes only I would quite like to install a micro HEP and see what electricity I could produce. Anyone done anything along these lines before and can offer any tips...
bushcraftuk.com
I think you need UK planning if you are going to extract from the water source. I wouldn't think a water wheel does, but a pipe for a turbine will. A site with a waterfall is more likely (according to one water board info I read) to get permission because it blocks what a fish might do already.
Using a link to a turbine company from Scoraig Wind's website to calculate pipe size required and expected output meant it would not be worth me buying a small turbine. Making a wheel to drive something after some rain may be fun though. Like Advoko makes-
www.powerspout.com
Using a link to a turbine company from Scoraig Wind's website to calculate pipe size required and expected output meant it would not be worth me buying a small turbine. Making a wheel to drive something after some rain may be fun though. Like Advoko makes-
Pelton & Turgo Advanced Calculator
*Please note this calculator may not work well on touchscreen devices*
www.powerspout.com
The Permies forum sometimes allows free access to some of their videos that most of the time they want you to pay for. One of those occasional freebies last year covered a NZ project where they made their own ram pump in a fair sized stream to provide a water supply up and over an adjacent hill. They exploded a few of their pistons, had issues with seals, but it did work. One thing they wanted to develop was using the compression to squash air. Compressed air as a power source it seems has quite a history in off grid use and, if I remember the video correctly, can be used to refrigerate. I can't even find the link to buy their info at the minute.
Correct, you just let the (cooled) compressed gas expand and it cools, called Joule-Kelvin cooling.
Ok so you build a water wheel like Advoko's in the video GrizzlyJ's recommend above and stick a 55 litre barrel of water above it to feed the trough and a pump at the bottom to refill the barrel. Do we get enough power to charge a battery and run the pump?All discussed exactly a year ago.
If you do not have a 'head' of water or a large flow rate (or, ideally both) you will not generate meaningful power. Lighting LED's is simple, boiling your kettle isn't.
Washing Machine Micro HEP
I have an old washing machine and access to a decent fast running stream that falls parallel to the property - for educational purposes only I would quite like to install a micro HEP and see what electricity I could produce. Anyone done anything along these lines before and can offer any tips...
If we move from what Advoko has made to something using modern materials with this level of complete control what happens then?
I have a feeling I am missing something here?
Really interesting channel thanks for that. I think I am stuck with the wind turbines work however no one is doing anything with water when it is the same principles and technology.I think you need UK planning if you are going to extract from the water source. I wouldn't think a water wheel does, but a pipe for a turbine will. A site with a waterfall is more likely (according to one water board info I read) to get permission because it blocks what a fish might do already.
Using a link to a turbine company from Scoraig Wind's website to calculate pipe size required and expected output meant it would not be worth me buying a small turbine. Making a wheel to drive something after some rain may be fun though. Like Advoko makes-
Pelton & Turgo Advanced Calculator
*Please note this calculator may not work well on touchscreen devices*
Definitely not - that would come under the heading of 'perpetual motion'. A barrel of water at any height cannot generate enough power to pump the same volume of water back up. There are energy losses due to the flow of the water in the trough and the pipe (frictional) and the efficiencies of the wheel and pump.
There are plenty of good examples of water turbines, both small and large, but they do require high flow rates or high pressures (head).
I went on a course with someone who had a small hydro power setup that provided enough electricity to cover most of their household needs during the colder months and then they had solar panels for the summer when water levels weren't enough to allow them to divert any to the turbine.
D
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Many years ago I went with the Scottish Solar Energy group to see a water power feature in some rich man's home. As far as I remember, it was a small river/stream which had been dammed and it then fed through a grid into a turbine. The turbine was located in a purpose made cabin. I think it could produce about 2.4kw, but as the pile of weed showed, the grid constantly needed cleaning, and (like so much other renewable "energy" we saw that day), it wasn't working at the time of our visit.
Moreover, when I did a quick mental calculation of the cost versus payback, even if it was working, it was never going to pay back the cost of building the dam and the hut and buying the equipment and laying the mains cable down to the stream.
If you want to do down that route, start with solar heat.
I think the problem is size of everything needed because we know it will not run forever. That is why you need a running water supply.
What about things like water pressure, siphons, and ram pumps?
That what makes me think there is something obvious to this and I think it might be the required amount of water to get worth while results.
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