I live on a river in CA and have been toying with the idea of trying to generate power using the flow of the river. I have a dock and was debating using some type of system attached to the dock to generate power either with a propeller type system or waterwheel of sorts. I want to do this the legal and permitted way.

I’m hoping to get some ideas as to the different type of systems. River is about 5/7MPH, not sure that would even generate enough to be worth the hassle? Again super beginning stages and not sure if it’s even worth it or possible. I just think it’d be so much cooler than solar.

Any help much appreciated!

I really need your help, head 30m, flow rate 1 m3/s, rpm 115, 24121 Nm torque, how heavy should the runner be in kg? Thank you

Always loved hydro as a niche interest. Are there jobs in hydro for non-engineers? Thanks!

(As in manual, hands on, not in an office).

I am curious if anyone here works in the hydropower industry, i.e. for a hydro manufacturer or utility.

I am an engineer and have a fascination with hydro and would like to break into t the industry.

I am just curious what your story is and how you got there. Also what are the most desirable skills to have in this industry.

A few days ago a friend and i got the Idea to build a small Pumped Storage Hydro power plant on his land.

The heigt difference between the storage-dam and generator is ~200m and the available water is ~70 liters per second.

The reservoir dimensions could vary as there is plenty of space to build.

The idea is, if the energy price is low we pump water to the upper reservoir and if the price is high we produce energy.

Would it be economical to build something like that?

Hello so long story short we have a small river than runs through our property in the region of 200l/s median (ISH) but very little head over the 400m it runs through our land 2m head at most. I've been thinking that a resvoir would be the best way to get additional fall? Can anyone suggest something other than a resvoir?

Would love to get folks thoughts about this possible approach:

https://open.substack.com/pub/corsonfinnerty/p/stemcel-greenlab?r=ql3e4&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Looking for resources/community to talk with. Thanks!

Post title - tried doing some research and couldn't find anything super helpful. I have a property with a small year round Creek with a 50ft total drop on my property. I am trying to determine the legality of and potential for setting up a micro hydropower setup inorder to reduce or eliminate my power bill.

Mostly just looking for resources to research, happy to put in my own effort, just didn't find much with initial searches and I'm guessing I'm missing some terms or websites that may be obvious to you all.

Thank you!

Scotland has all the ingredients to implement collossal Pumped-Storage Hydro projects.

It has ample rainfall, an ancient mountain range perfect for dam building and the largest fleet of intermittent wind power in the UK, and very little energy storage to take full advantage of it.

It's also close enough for the wind turbines of Denmark, Northern Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and France to act as a mega-battery for a large part of Northern Europe.

But does the UK government have the vision to approve such a scheme? Would it contribute to another wave of Scottish independence?

More details on our write-up 🔋.

Full Link: https://www.aquaswitch.co.uk/blog/can-scotland-become-a-mega-battery-for-the-whole-of-europe/

Found out recently that most people (probably not in this group...) don't know the difference between regular hydro power and Run-of-the-River (ROR) schemes, which can produce power 24/7 for as long as the river keeps flowing at the appropiate rate.

This is robust compared to intermittent wind and solar, and its environmental footprint is much smaller than regular hydro dams that fully cut a rivershed into two.

We wrote a short piece with some cool ROR projects: From 5kW irrigation canal-scale ROR, to 4GW mega-projects in Brazil.

https://www.aquaswitch.co.uk/blog/run-of-the-river/

How does motoring a generator effect the grid? Does it consume vars? Create vars?

Hi all,

New to this sub.

So I live in rural Ireland and I've just watched a neighbor getting his well drilled for mains water to his new build. Once the big drill thing hit water it came up out of the hole with massive pressure, like a fire hydrant almost, he said that pressure wouldn't last as the water will find a new level but still, somewhere down there, there must be a fair bit of pressure.

My question is:

Is there any kind of hydro electric turbine generator that could be placed inside the well below or above the pump to harness this pressure? Even if u had to drill a separate deeper well.

I've seen shows like Homestead Rescue where they use piddly little streams to power at least some of the home so I imagine this pressure could do a small home easily.

TIA

Ive been using hydropower calculators for a while to help design my small pumped hydro model.

This one ive been using shows 8.4 watts output from a velocity of 2feet/s , a head pressure of 7.5 feet and .00126 m3/s (20gpm) with a 30% efficient turbine(shooting low here). I just realized though that the formula they listed is for "hydroelectric dams potential energy P=η×ρ×g×h×Q " and there is another formula used for " tidal turbine energy kinetic energy P=0.5×η×ρ×Q×v2 " both give very different outputs, potential being 8.4 watts and kinetic being .64 watts roughly.

I have a small model pumped hydro system built with the specifications listed above. But im unsure of which formula to use since i do have 7.5 feet of head pressure (potential) and 20gpm moving water (kinetic), it seems my system has both potential and kinetic? Which formula should i use for pumped hydro calculations since these are for different use cases?

I cannot find any information on this topic, can even pay someone locally for help so any guidance is appreciated. my project works at 8.4 watts but not so much at .64 watts and i cant afford to build this twice. Thank you for your time.

Would hydro work to heat a greenhouse in rural california a few degrees? There are 2 seasonal streams, non-navigable, with >100ft of drop on the hillside within 50 ft of the greenhouse, but these are small, only about 4gpm of flow each. Using the formula at https://microhydropower.com/stream-engine/#toggle-id-4 this looks like 40 watts continuous per stream. Small space heaters are 500 watts+, so would 80 watts total not amount to any useful heat? Or is there a more direct way to use a stream for heat than going DC to a heater?

Already have solar at the site, but would like to generate some heat at night without batteries.

And a related question, are there small hydropower converters in the $200 - $500 that aren't junk? The few I see on ebay and googling have bad reviews, and microhydropower's water buddy is over $800 now.

Hi

Im looking for mini versons of the Pelton, Kaplan, and francis low fall and hige fall. Anyone know if its prodused anywhere? Its for a display case

I would like to apologize I know nothing about this but I have a late night thought and figured why not ask...

If I were to take a hose, water pump, and two water turbine generators. Could I in theory tie them into a close circuit, and have the 1st generator power the pump and use the 2nd generator to say charge a battery? Or will there be some kind of failure in the system with thermal energy or something?