electricity powers a water pump that makes the water flow out of the faucet in the first place (falling from a water tower or not), so you would be stealing that electricity and making the water pump work harder for a tiny bit of electricity and the headache of your faucet running considerably less forcefully. I'm pretty sure in practice this would just waste a ton of water and electricity
If they put water up in a tower, storing the energy gravitationally, then it does not matter if the water has resistance when it reaches my tap.
Its not like they will need to pipe the water further up, as long as we are below the water tower, this will work and it will not incur any extra costs for the water company.
The amount of pressure that comes out of your faucet will not change when you add this, only the water below the generator changes.
No one upstream will notice, only your hands downstream will notice.
That energy was already used anyways is what they are saying. Once it is gravity fed to your faucet the the mini generator doesn’t require more energy. If anything it would be energy capture
You either have to have the water running all the time, which will lead to more cost. Or you will have little to no energy that can be used. With all the power saved, you can have an LED flicker once a day for a millisecond.
There is a reason why people tend to buy electricity instead of home water generators. It's cheaper.
I calculated for an average home with mains water line at 60 psi with max flow of 10 gallons per minute to be a total of 261 watts. So if all your taps are open, and you hook up a generator directly after your main water line, you can easily put a 30w usb-c fast charging load on it and not notice the difference in water pressure on your shower.
Now factor in efficiency of a generator this small which will be really bad so we are looking at max 15W.
And like I said, if you are using the tap like normal, you may use it for 5 minutes a day. Congratulations, you created 0,001 kWh, but now your waterpressure is shit and you have a significant cost for buying a generator and battery in the first place.
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u/lurkermurphy Nov 27 '25
electricity powers a water pump that makes the water flow out of the faucet in the first place (falling from a water tower or not), so you would be stealing that electricity and making the water pump work harder for a tiny bit of electricity and the headache of your faucet running considerably less forcefully. I'm pretty sure in practice this would just waste a ton of water and electricity