Water power

[Forerunner]

Anyone on board have experience with any version of the Pelton wheel ?

[ace admirer]

well theory only, the area i live in is too flat to use peltons...

[SolarGary]

Hi,
I don't, but there are some stories/plans from people who have done actual Pelton and Turgo wheels here:

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Hydro/hydro.htm

Really important to measure your drop and flow available carefully (for both the good season and the bad season).

Gary

[Harry Chickpea]

The early Homepower magazines have a lot about peltons. and people who make and use them. Primarily they are a high head turbine used in mountainous territory, although a grist mill in the town where I grew up replaced their overhead wheel with a pelton and had good results. The other turbine, for lower head use, is a Francis turbine. You really need a lot of water to do much more than charge a couple of batteries.

[Forerunner]

I'm aware of the head and volume requirements, and, having recently purchased the huge gully/creek to the north of me, I see potential for at least 50 feet of head, and with a little engineering and planning, any volume I would need for intermittent twenty four hour periods, and a sustainable 1 or 2 kilowatts indefinitely. I'm kind of excited, but there is a lot of work to be done.

[Our Little Farm]

Watching this thread with interest...........

[fishhead]

Does IL allow a person to dam a stream?

[Jim-mi]

---Quietly-- check around about "diversion" of water.
Some areas have super tight (ridiculous) rules and regulations about such . . . EVEN on your own land..............
This is a local/state thing . . so a key-board cowboy from tim-buck-too could give you bad info.

If you don't have water to spin a Pelton . .have you seen those units that are suspended in the water...look like the lower unit of an outboard motor . . .
They are not "large" output but a 24/7 output adds up.

[MichaelK!]

Originally Posted by Forerunner

I'm aware of the head and volume requirements, and, having recently purchased the huge gully/creek to the north of me, I see potential for at least 50 feet of head, and with a little engineering and planning, any volume I would need for intermittent twenty four hour periods, and a sustainable 1 or 2 kilowatts indefinitely. I'm kind of excited, but there is a lot of work to be done.

Fifty feet of head is still not very much for an alternative hydro system. It's good though that you can have high flows to compensate. If you want real-time power generation from hydro you are going to have to have a governed system (that means EXPENSIVE). The governor acts like a throttle and allows more water to push against the wheel when power demand goes up, then reduces the flow when that load is switched back off.

A much simpler system would be a wheel turning a small alternator constantly, feeding the power into storage batteries. Your batteries act as the throttle in this case, dishing out more power as loads get switched on. This is the kind of system you can throw together with easy to get parts like a recycled car alternator and golf cart batteries. Place an inverter right there at the power head, then you can wire 120V AC back to where-ever your cabin is situated.
Good luck,
Michael

[fishhead]

I work in remote sensing (aerial photos) and can spot a small dam on a small stream very easily. The days are gone when alterations like that go unnoticed for very long.

Small streams are critical habitat for some fish species and putting up a dam without including a fish passageway could mean the end of a population. That's not leaving a better world for the next generation.

I've wondered if using the weight of the water instead of the velocity might be a good route for small scale energy production. Think of a slow moving water wheel like they used to grind grain. Even multiplying the weight of the water by just a few feet would produce a lot of force. 10 cubic feet (640 lbs) of water multipled by a 3 foot arm is a lot of torque.

[Forerunner]

Michael, the simplified, do-it-yourself system you described is just a little less sophisticated and productive than my own current, homemade system.
Any system I build, regardless of power source, will likely be more hands on and in need of moderate supervision than self-automating.
I envision a small to medium concrete structure that a serviceable, miniature shop can be set up inside of with tool grinder, grain mill, alternator, etc. all powered by water flow.
As for legalities, the creek I'm referring to is small, flows about 9 months out of the year, and will not be taken too seriously around here.
I already have a fairly large dam even higher in elevation, upstream a few hundred yards from where I'd like to build, on a tributary of the creek in question, and intend to experiment with flow out of that pond as I design the larger structure down here.
Head from that dam may be more like 60 feet. During spring rain season, we'd get a lot of use out of the high water flow, even though the flow is intermittent.
I could even route that flow down to my existing powerhouse...... but then there would be the issue of disposing of the spent water.....

[Forerunner]

With a name like Fishhead, I suppose you would be more concerned about the finned and scaled population than most.
No fish in this stream.
....and I certainly am considering all options, slow water power being near the top of the list.

[chickenista]

YouTube

Here is one episode of 'It's Not Easy Being Green' where Dick and crew begin the construction of their water wheel, including the diversion of water and the proper drop along the sluice etc.. Also covers the generator and the construction of the wheel itself.
If you are unfamiliar with the show, I think you would really like it. They do some amazing things on their farm.
The water wheel is amazing and they light their house with it and have it set so that there is steady current and no fluctuations.
I also like the ingenious way they heat their green house. PVC, in-line duct fan and a 'bed' of glass in the floor with more PVC.. brilliant. The composting toilet is cool too...
Enjoy!!

[paintboy]

Could you run a pipe from the lake to where you want to build? Perhaps underground to avoid freezing. A few hundred yards would translate into a lot of pressure at the wheel.

[silverbackMP]

Originally Posted by paintboy

Could you run a pipe from the lake to where you want to build? Perhaps underground to avoid freezing. A few hundred yards would translate into a lot of pressure at the wheel.

I'm wondering that as well. My parents have about a 4-5 acre pond that collects off about 100 acres of rainfall in mid missouri. I would guess the dam is about a 30 ft tall ---- and I suspect that most of the pond is 25-30 ft deep.

Beavers repeately dam up the 12" overflow pipe; every time we get it cleaned out the pipe runs for days, with lots of GPM and lots of pressure (have no idea how much but there is lots of energy). Now the #$# beavers are working on the emergency spill way. I gotta deal with them next time I'm back (I have a plan involving a "babbling brook" CD, "boom box", 12 gauge, and a spotlight).

Anyway, I'm thinking a smaller diameter pipe driven from the far side of the pond bank into the pond about 2/3rds of the way down. Perhaps pour concrete around the entrance for a anti--seep jacket?

This would not have much head as determined by the traditional method (fall) but I would think it would have a great deal of pressure?

Would this be enough to run a Pelton wheel? I know I would need to get a pressure guage and test it, but I want to here opinion before I do this.

Then plan would be to run this Spring, Fall, and Winter when there is plenty of percipitation and tie into an existing solar, genset, battery, inverter based system. Basically allow the water to charge the batteries during the seasons when it is more cloudly and less sunlight and allow the solar to charge during peak sunlight/less rainfall.

Thoughts?

[Forerunner]

Sounds like we think alike, Silverback.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

I'm also wondering what might be gained, if anything, by starting out with eight or ten inch pipe at the pond, with a screen to prevent clogging, and incrementally necking down to one or two inch at the wheel.

[silverbackMP]

Originally Posted by Forerunner

Sounds like we think alike, Silverback.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

I'm also wondering what might be gained, if anything, by starting out with eight or ten inch pipe at the pond, with a screen to prevent clogging, and incrementally necking down to one or two inch at the wheel.

Forerunner,

I don't think I would want to go with a pipe that large in an existing dam--new construction would be ok. A pipe that size would definitly need anti-weep collars and I don't know how you could drive it through an existing dam (without specialized equipment and a potential for a "hold my beer and watch this" moment). There may be a way to do it--I'm not a pond builder, hydrologist, or engineer (wish I was ).

[fantasymaker]

Originally Posted by Forerunner

No fish in this stream. .

Then its not likly to be usable for the production you want. sorry.

[fishhead]

Originally Posted by Forerunner

With a name like Fishhead, I suppose you would be more concerned about the finned and scaled population than most.
No fish in this stream.
....and I certainly am considering all options, slow water power being near the top of the list.

Yes. I'm a fisheries biologist. I had a fish farm until I filed a complaint against a criminal gang (MN DNR). It was all downhill from there so I no longer have the farm.

Even seasonal streams have resident fish population when they are full of water. Many species use those to spawn in the relative absence of predators and competition.

An easy to get water on the downhill side of the dam without risking the dike is to put a siphon over the top. I siphoned 10's of millions of gallons on my fish farm using a portable siphon made from sections of 4" pvc booted together. Even with only 2-3' of head the water flowed at 200+ gpm. Despite the constant fast current and no place to rest in the 60' of smooth pipe I would regularly find 2-3" perch and bass that had swam up the pipe and got stopped by the screened box on the uphill end.

Changing the diameter of the pipe will have no impact on pressure but it will affect flow with the smallest diameter dictating the amount of water flowing through the pipe.

To keep beaver from blocking overflow pipes some people have had success with putting a horizontal tee on the overflow pipe with 10' or more of horizontal pipe sticking out in both directions. The horizontal pipe has holes drilled in the bottom of pipe to diffuse and hide the flow under the water surface. This is the same principal used on Clemson Levelers.

[texican]

On the diversion location, don't ask, don't tell. And to keep prying satellite eyes away, and airborne snoopers, I'd make sure there were overhanging trees. Trees are your friend if you want to escape Google Earth. Only evidence I exist down here is one barn without tree cover...