Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Now all you need is a river and a dumpster:

http://www.verterraenergy.com/

https://preciousplastic.com/en/

And a high-tech company with access to a machine shop to build the innards.

Unless there are special considerations (beauty?), laminar flow speeds are slowest at the bottom and near the shore. Ideally, the turbine or wheel should be placed at the top in the center of the river. During the war in Yugoslavia, people rigged barges with paddle wheels hooked up to generators off from the bridges. Those were big and ugly.

In any case, like the electric car, this is pretty mature technology (dating to around the same time i.e. 1850s) and one can buy such turbines for homesteading, boating, etc. Figure a few thousand bucks. Keywords are pelton wheel and turgo turbine. The hard part would be finding a river with enough head and flow that isn't occupied by such a turbine already.

jacob wrote:'The hard part would be finding a river with enough head and flow that isn't occupied by such a turbine already.

or flowing water that you have permission to use. Just because a river or creek flows thru your property, doesn't mean you can use it for hydroelectric power.

Okay, how about this one?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hy ... -fits-into

Cute and overpriced. All this is ancient technology...

Here's something similar:
http://marinewarehouse.net/ampair.html#Aquair100 (behind a boat, requires 5+ knot flow speeds)
http://marinewarehouse.net/ampair.html#Underwater100 (under a boat)
http://www.powerspout.com/ (peltons and turgos)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5KiNf8IaUU (pelton wheel --- low head, like a stream)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njNYuEKW-ek (turgo turbine --- medium head, several feet, hence pipes)

Lots of old-school options
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/pelton-wheel (by the way, there's nothing magical about pelton wheels. It's just more efficient than a paddle wheel.)

You can even find ones that attach to a kitchen faucet and run off the city-water pressure.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DC-12V-DC-gener ... 1826215071 ($10 from China)

Here's the 1835 electric car or cart as it may be.
http://www.rug.nl/society-business/univ ... /stratingh

Was intrigued by the link Jacob posted about generation from city water pressure. We have unmetered water here..... For all the brains out there, how much power do you think I could generate from home water pressure in practical terms?

@Did - Not that much(*). Also consider that the utility is paying to pressurize the water pipes. You're essentially getting some of the energy they spent doing that back while wasting drinking water in the process. These systems mostly make sense where water is truly free. In practical terms, you might have unmetered water but consider what if anything will happen---like a visit to see if your pipes have burst---if usage suddenly 10x'ed because you had all your faucets running at full tilt around the clock

(*) Figure out the flow rate (e.g. the volume of water you can get out in a second. Then multiply with the pressure which should be around 40-60 psi. Have fun with the unit conversion. You'll end up with something that's energy over time (or Watt). Example: 5l/min at 55psi comes to 31.6 Watt(**). Now multiply with however efficient the system is. Doing direct-drive will be much more efficient than cranking a generator that charges a battery that's used to drive a gadget.

(**) In comparison an average unfit person can pedal 80-100W worth of power practically all day long.

@jacob Yeah sounds like I'm not going to disconnect from the grid just yet. In better news, we got our annual property tax notice today - 90 Euro!

@jacob: Very cool! I was searching my brain and the internet for the name of a mechanical metal fixture you can attach to the flow of water from a roof-height water storage system to increase the pressure enough to use it to irrigate a garden across your yard (hydraulic ram pump.) Anyways, I happened upon this potentially very useful cache of documents.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ah810e/AH810E05.htm

I struck groundwater at 38 inches while attempting to dig some fence post holes on my property, so now I won't have to haul water from the river in my bike trailer through the zombie zone in a worst-case scenario -lol.

I was searching my brain and the internet for the name of a mechanical metal fixture you can attach to the flow of water from a roof-height water storage system to increase the pressure enough to use it to irrigate a garden across your yard (hydraulic ram pump.) Anyways, I happened upon this potentially very useful cache of documents.

Or, simply drip irrigate using the roof height system's pressure. Less mold (wet dirt, not wet plants), no moving parts, no maintenance, WAY more efficient. Hydraulic rams are great, if you have continuous low pressure flow you want to turn into higher pressure, but GREATLY reduced volume. Typically, use a spring to pump water up a hill to the cistern. Then pump out of the cistern to the house/barn. You could, if you had enough water and hill, place the cistern high enough not to need a pump for household pressure, but that is a very rare combination.

jacob wrote:
'The hard part would be finding a river with enough head and flow that isn't occupied by such a turbine already.


or flowing water that you have permission to use. Just because a river or creek flows thru your property, doesn't mean you can use it for hydroelectric power.

In WA, this requires permits at the federal, state, and local levels. I gave up after just looking into the permitting costs. Kinda like building a dock, this is an ancient technology, regulated to the point that only the rich can use it.

If you are thinking you will move out to the middle of nowhere, and no rules will apply to your wilderness kingdom, consider, most states claim all water bodies as their own, and then grant right of way to anglers with fishing permits, and kayakers. This means your isolated land, with your "no trespassing" signs, will still be subject to random strangers having access. Eventually, the rules will apply, as will the fines. Even if you have deeded water rights, it will be a protracted legal fight to enforce them. Micro Hydro is for the very rich, (or the very poor, on rented land).