Water power

[Rum]

Carlisle may be slightly unusual but several rivers flow through it and in fact meet the larger River Eden here or near here. I walk along the banks of several of them from time to time.

A number of these small rivers, no more than 30 to 50 feet wide have been 'managed' in places to regulate their slopes and as a result there are a good half dozen weirs (a sort of made made waterfall) of less than five feet I would say. The volume of water going over these weirs is considerable and I found myself wondering how much electricity they would generate using some form of simple turbine and without any other infrastructure, e.g. a damn, to raise the water level.

Seems to me you might provide power for a good few hundred houses. A neglected source of power perhaps.

Some of you engineery types have any idea what sort of wattage we might be talking about?

[Thinking Aloud]

http://www.reuk.co.uk/Calculation-of-Hydro-Power.htm (If you can work out the volume!)

[rainbow]

Carlisle may be slightly unusual but several rivers flow through it and in fact meet the larger River Eden here or near here. I walk along the banks of several of them from time to time.

A number of these small rivers, no more than 30 to 50 feet wide have been 'managed' in places to regulate their slopes and as a result there are a good half dozen weirs (a sort of made made waterfall) of less than five feet I would say. The volume of water going over these weirs is considerable and I found myself wondering how much electricity they would generate using some form of simple turbine and without any other infrastructure, e.g. a damn, to raise the water level.

Seems to me you might provide power for a good few hundred houses. A neglected source of power perhaps.

Some of you engineery types have any idea what sort of wattage we might be talking about?

Yes, but what about the little fishies?

[Clinton Huxley]

One could fit mini-turbines onto one's thunderbox and harvest energy every time one uses it.

[Rum]

One could fit mini-turbines onto one's thunderbox and harvest energy every time one uses it.

Unnatural gas?

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

Carlisle may be slightly unusual but several rivers flow through it and in fact meet the larger River Eden here or near here. I walk along the banks of several of them from time to time.

A number of these small rivers, no more than 30 to 50 feet wide have been 'managed' in places to regulate their slopes and as a result there are a good half dozen weirs (a sort of made made waterfall) of less than five feet I would say. The volume of water going over these weirs is considerable and I found myself wondering how much electricity they would generate using some form of simple turbine and without any other infrastructure, e.g. a damn, to raise the water level.

Seems to me you might provide power for a good few hundred houses. A neglected source of power perhaps.

Some of you engineery types have any idea what sort of wattage we might be talking about?

Too many variables and unknowns to even guess at the practicality of this, but "a few hundred homes" seems very, very optimistic, to me.

[cronus]

Too much flooding in them hills. You'd need some clever sluice gates and the like to keep the pressure constant enough for steady electricity generation. Possible but quite expensive I should imagine.

[MiM]

Carlisle may be slightly unusual but several rivers flow through it and in fact meet the larger River Eden here or near here. I walk along the banks of several of them from time to time.

A number of these small rivers, no more than 30 to 50 feet wide have been 'managed' in places to regulate their slopes and as a result there are a good half dozen weirs (a sort of made made waterfall) of less than five feet I would say. The volume of water going over these weirs is considerable and I found myself wondering how much electricity they would generate using some form of simple turbine and without any other infrastructure, e.g. a damn, to raise the water level.

Seems to me you might provide power for a good few hundred houses. A neglected source of power perhaps.

Some of you engineery types have any idea what sort of wattage we might be talking about?

Yes, but what about the little fishies?

.
Any salmon or trout in there? They wouldn't like those turbines at all.

[Cormac]

Carlisle may be slightly unusual but several rivers flow through it and in fact meet the larger River Eden here or near here. I walk along the banks of several of them from time to time.

A number of these small rivers, no more than 30 to 50 feet wide have been 'managed' in places to regulate their slopes and as a result there are a good half dozen weirs (a sort of made made waterfall) of less than five feet I would say. The volume of water going over these weirs is considerable and I found myself wondering how much electricity they would generate using some form of simple turbine and without any other infrastructure, e.g. a damn, to raise the water level.

Seems to me you might provide power for a good few hundred houses. A neglected source of power perhaps.

Some of you engineery types have any idea what sort of wattage we might be talking about?

Yes, but what about the little fishies?

.
Any salmon or trout in there? They wouldn't like those turbines at all.

Easy. Not all the water needs to go through the turbine.

[Rum]

They already have bits at the side the fish can swim up - purpose built.

[Cormac]

Two choices, for good head (f'naar) environments, a good old turbine can be used. The lowest requires about 1m of head and with sufficiet flow can produce 1kw at peak (from memory). Looks a bit like this:



http://www.altestore.com/store/Alternat ... bine/p504/

The higher the head the better the performance.

For low head environments, the traditional waterwheel can be effective where there is sufficient flow to provide substantial torque.

A microhydro installation might look like this:

It is generally believed that turbines are much more efficient than water wheels and subsequently took over their role as hydraulic power converters. The statistics however show a different picture. In Bavaria - a German province of 70,500 km² area - for example there were 7,554 operational water wheels counted as late as 1927, with power outputs ranging from 0.75 to 75 kW

Chapter and verse on performace of various waterwheels here:
http://williamson.us.com/Information/De ... wheels.htm

[Rum]

The lower of these two is typical of the sort of drop and size of river I was referring to. I had something a little less intrusive in mind however..

[Jason]

[Jason]

Small mini hydropower plants tend to become costly, as the civil works (plant building, foundations, ...) are approximately the same regardless of power plant size. And as small plant give less income than large plants, the civil works costs have stopped many mini hydropower plant projects at the planning stage.

From some company selling an improved type of 'exterior' turbine.
http://www.cleanpower.no/Home/Tubeturbi ... trade.aspx

Output 0.1-3 MW

[Jason]

1KW hardly seems worth the expense. I have a 1.2KW generator that cost me $150.. I also have a 25KW diesel generator that cost me nothing.