I Have a Large Strong Flowing Creek, I Want To Run Two Households.
Many Many Years ago Mother Earth News Mag. Had one advertised that would MORE than run a Large House and anything In it, listed for 3 thousand,
Fast forward 40 years,
I now am in a Place this Would be good for me, What do I need to Know ?.
I’m gonna piggyback on this thread because I am interested too.
Mine is a small steady year round spring which dumps into a pond. The outflow pipe from the pond is an 8” pvc pipe with about 15’ of head behind it.
The house is a small weekend getaway place, used once a month. It could have very minimal load.
I have nothing useful to add, but I am reminded of this: https://what-if.xkcd.com/91/
Several youtubers are repurposeing dryer motors to generate hydroelectric power.
Maybe start with a smaller scale idea to prove the concept, then scale it up?
Off the top of my head though, pick up a gas generator with a bad engine. Pull engine off, connect remaining alternator to a water wheel with appropriate gearing to achieve the stated motor RPM. I'm making this up of course...
**Edit- more importantly, probably (I’m not an engineer) is figuring out a way to keep whatever RPM you need as stable as possible. Fluctuating RPM will in turn cause voltage and frequency fluctuations that would be bad.
I would need to strip 50 Dryers to do what I want I think, and I also thought abou a couple Gas powered Generaters that relied on water power 'Till the Gas may be needed, But as said " Large Good Flowing Creek" . I want just 1 Unit,
UNlike Sun Power This is 24/7 Power ability, Can I sell Excess back to Power Company ?
If anyone saw Poopshovel's Creek It's that size, a couple Miles N.west of Him
Hydroelectric power plants use turbines. I’d try to find something smaller/cheaper that could be used as one, then use that to drive a broken gas/diesel generator as mentioned.
Make sure your dept of natural resources won't have your hide for altering the creek.
I can't add a lot to this but this site has an online calculator that might give you an idea of how much power you can actually get out of your creeks.
https://soarhydro.com/equipment/
You would run a generator like this through an inverter of some sorts to get steady 60Hz power out of it at the proper voltage. If you can get a Net-metering (or something similar) setup with your utility then that will take care the extra capacity you'll need at certain times and take the excess power at others, if not battery storage will be necessary to go off the grid.
Adam
Apexcarver said:Make sure your dept of natural resources won't have your hide for altering the creek.
Exactly. The USCOE will hammer you for forking around with the "navigable waters of the US". That is in quotes because in no way does it need to be navigable.
Two ways to "capture" the power you need.
1. Head. The distance water drops. If you can grab water at a higher upstream elevation, say 30-50 feet in a small catchment basin, run it down lower in a pipe, then you have a constant stream of water/energy to spin something. I've seen automotive alternators and a bank of batteries used. Imagine being able to spin an alternator at the appropriate speed 24/7 and store that energy.
2. Undershot water wheel. You need to build a canal of sorts where the water flowing forces a wheel to spin. Lots of old sawmills worked like this. Not a whole lot of velocity on the wheel itself so you need to gear up whatever you're using to generate power. Either way, you probably need some sort of power storage system to account for high draw times.
What if our power generation goal is just enough to run a water pump?
I know it sound stupid, and maybe impossible, but living in a valley, and coming off of two years of record rainfall, I have been thinking of a water wheel run partially by my creek, that could pull water out of the ground and send it down stream.
Seriously, my well is 125 feet deep, I can't dig a 1 foot deep hole anywhere on my property without it filling itself up with water inside of 5 minutes. Maybe a wheel running a separate well pump could help dry the surface up a bit?
I am reminded of this: Turbulent Hydro
Seems very nifty to me. I could totally see it being used for an off-the-grid place, but I don't imagine installation would be particularly cheap.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27257/27257-h/27257-h.htm
I dont know if I did thelink right but this may help.
It's an old book on power for the farm. Might give you some theory at least.
Check out this guys system, NOT CHEAP but very well done https://www.youtube.com/user/MrHydrohead
Turgo is the "mini" turbine of choice last time I looked into it. DIY versions can be made....
mazdeuce - Seth said:Two ways to "capture" the power you need.
1. Head. The distance water drops. If you can grab water at a higher upstream elevation, say 30-50 feet in a small catchment basin, run it down lower in a pipe, then you have a constant stream of water/energy to spin something. I've seen automotive alternators and a bank of batteries used. Imagine being able to spin an alternator at the appropriate speed 24/7 and store that energy.
2. Undershot water wheel. You need to build a canal of sorts where the water flowing forces a wheel to spin. Lots of old sawmills worked like this. Not a whole lot of velocity on the wheel itself so you need to gear up whatever you're using to generate power. Either way, you probably need some sort of power storage system to account for high draw times.
A turbine design will be more efficient than a water wheel design.
The water wheel system is how most ytuber does the water power generation. Some actually had a real mini-turbine to do the work. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwVtAvxECRpogletKHlV_uQ
And this https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_j30Zxju3HollCKaKZYTw
I would bet that those kinds of systems are better and controlling head and flow so that the turbine speed is more consistent.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
My likely scenario is not a water wheel, but rather utilizing the head to generate electricity and use battery storage.
It’s a very steady flow 24/7/365.
I need to check into net metering options. That would change quite a bit.
And if you have a drop, like the theoretical 50' drop above, with a pipe, you can actually make it feed you compressed air. The pipe takes in air and water, at the bottom, you separate out the water and wind up with compressed air.
For just a water wheel, I suggest looking at some old stuff and copying how they did it. People have only been doing this for a thousand years, so, like, it's not that complicated or high tech.
It's called Flat Creek For a reason,Lol
No Real Drop but Lots of Flow to turn Some device. In My Mind I had a Mill type wheel about 10 ft. high with a 1 ft. wide 'Paddle' sitting a couple feet in the water flow but I may be trying to be too Simple.
spitfirebill said:Apexcarver said:Make sure your dept of natural resources won't have your hide for altering the creek.
Exactly. The USCOE will hammer you for forking around with the "navigable waters of the US". That is in quotes because in no way does it need to be navigable.
I’m pretty sure I recently read where those rules have been changed or are in the process of changing
I recall it going to court, like All The Way, and it was decided that the words mean what they say THIS TIME, not whatever they want them to say. And that because of that, water in the gutter on your street or a puddle in your lawn are not "navigable waters of the United States."
In reply to GTXVette :
In general you need a walled ditch just wider than the wheel so that all of the water is forced to do the work instead of just going around. Historically they'd make a branch off the main stream and control the speed of the wheel by controlling how much water they divert into the canal. Stream level changes can vary a lot and the equipment they'd run (like sawmills) do better with constant power output. I spent a little bit of time working with an industrial archaeologist and I never thought I'd use this information.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
"industrial archaeologist " sounds like a fun profession and one that I don't remember ever hearing about before.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
Yea, I 'Saw' that in my mind and found a spot where the creek was Shallow in the Middle and Channeled water to One side, but also saw the Flow rate Problem too. Your archiology could maybe tell me what the old Mill Like foundation was 150 years ago Before Grant came through
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