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Apr 24
2009
2009
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Our Blog covers site survey, hydro turbine selection, penstocks and pipelines, water flow and head pressure, etc. - Still have an unanswered question? Post it in the comments!
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We are all about Your Renewable Hydroelectric Questions!
Feel free to comment on any post by using the ‘comments button‘ shown at the top of each post. Make sure to keep it polite as we help each other do SmallHydro.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
If in the future we need to moderate comments more strictly, (if we get problems with comments) then you will have to login through WordPress and select a Blog user-name and email that is unique. Once selected WordPress will send you the password in that email box. Follow their instructions, just know that the Top of the WordPress dashboard is a link to SmallHydro.com site. Click on it once you have signed in the first time.
It is a little tricky but we value your comments and we want to protect the comments from spam and other junk.
Keep on giving us your questions!
May 7th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
¿ Is posible to turn and starting dc motor to a dc generator with hydro power?
May 7th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
It would likely be better to consider an alternator to avoid brush wear and commutation issues. Alternatively you may want to look into “induction motors as generators.” It’s described in a book on the “Readers Corner” from the DoradoVista Small & Micro Hydro newsletter.
See : http://www.doradovista.com/ReadersCorner.html
Sincerely,
Jess
June 28th, 2009 at 1:32 am
Can a pond be used to produce hydroelectric power? how?
June 28th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Nate –
Regarding use of a pond for hydroelectric power. As long as the pond has a means to recharge its water storage you can use the head and flow to generate hydro electric power.
Now with that said, you will need to gather head data- water height difference between pond surface and discharge stream and flow rate that can be sustained. You may find the pond inlet flow varies month to month, that may still be OK if the average flow is within the right power range to harvest the hydro energy economically.
Look at the next SmallHydro blog post on Head measurement. Out soon!
Jess
July 20th, 2009 at 5:24 am
I have a medium size stream that runs thru my place that has a “constant “flow. I do not know all the state regulations that would be involved at this time. but I would not want to restrict the stream to fishermen that may be coming up or down the stream. Is there effeciency in an old fashion rotary wheel that could be placed for floating “due to rising waters in the rainy season that could be connected to the gearbox with a drivshaft and universal joints on dry land. there is a good flow but I don’t know how to measure the flow. but it is year round.
July 21st, 2009 at 4:38 am
Is it posseble to generate power [220v] with water wheel? Ido not have a stream of water. Can i “make” a stream ,ie, a large container 2-3 meter high, a flute to run water down on to wheel, a container [dam] under wheel to catch water, pump back to large container. Wheel must drive generator & water pump. Any help please.
July 24th, 2009 at 3:32 am
rodney
Where i live if the rule is if the fish cant use the water stream you can and sinse youll not make the water dissappear but only removing kinetic energy as the water falls in your location it should be allowed, of course the fewer people that you ask permission to do what you want on your property the better. the power available can be calculated fairly by multiplying the drop[feet] times the flow [gal per min] and devide that total by 10 and youll have the continuous watts available. please consider using simply a permanent mag generator as driveshafts etc tak away much of available power!
July 26th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Sarel,
Yes you can develop 220v from water wheels. With that said you need to look at the comment I just left on the topic of stored energy. See comment link below:
http://smallhydro.com/200906/hydropower-system/hydro-turbine-size-a-few-questions-and-answers/comment-page-1/#comment-118
July 26th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Rodney and Mike,
Mike has some good points regarding a litmus test of hydropower restrictions. Ask what is the critter impact? What is the water use impact?
Unfortunately we live in a world driven by a myriad of tangled laws. One of the areas where this type of regulation has run amok is in renewable hydropower. With that said, you need to determine in you own case what is right for you and your site.
Let us know what you find.
Jess
August 15th, 2009 at 9:02 am
1 instance ,i have291.66 gpm falling 161.7′ constant divided by 10 =4,716watts ….correct? why divide by 10? what efficiency rate is figuired into this equasion
September 5th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Finding your website tonight was a real treat! I have spent seven hours today looking for information and help. I live in Alaska and we our main power source is from a public owned utility. The power is hydro from a damn near by but if we don’t get enough rain for some reason they have to run the generators and our bills go sky high. They are actually pretty high as it is. But, I digress. I live out in a rural area, on an island, very isolated, dirt road and when winter comes we get lots of snow. As a back up for when the electricity goes off (which it does a lot ) we have a wood stove to keep us warm. Our property has a waterfall up on a small hill behind us and we have a salmon spawning creek that runs right through our yard. We get our water from both a catchment system off our roof (into a tank) and from the creek. The waterfall is high enough up the hill that it will not interfere with the spawning salmon. But I do know we have to get a permitt from the state because it is a spawning creek.
Thats all I know about mico-hydro except that we want to convert over to itif at all possible. Who could you recomend that we get to advise or consult with about the fesibility of this?
September 13th, 2009 at 2:32 am
Hi Jess,
I work in the central asian countries & east africa in these countries farmers are strugling to water there fields because of the draughts or lack of water what they have is eighter electrical motors or desial engines to pull water from the ground this is approx 70 to 100 foot below ground and comes through a 6″ pipe is there any way we can use this water to generate enough power to run these mumps on hydro power?
September 13th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Dear Iqbal,
It is possible to generate electrical power anywhere there is sufficient water pressure and flow rate. Whether it is practical remains to be seen based on each individual site. In your site’s case, the energy spent in pumping the water up 70 to 100 feet must not increase because of your additional hydropower generation at the pipe exit.
There are many cases where hydropower makes sense in this type of system. For example a water treatment plant might include several water pressure regulators or restrictors. At each of these points, energy is being dissipated and wasted. By simply inserting an appropriately sized water turbine into a bypass pipeline some of that energy can be recovered.
It is very important though to recognize that the energy produced by such an energy recovery system could not add additional pumping energy requirements. The simplest way to do this would be to design the turbines such that they do not produce more power than the pumps require or the choke was wasting.
In your case it would also be important to not overdraft the water table simply to try to produce more power. When water tables are overdrawn the porus ground formation collapses and can cause permanent water flow restriction and long-term damage to a water well resource. I doubt you’ll have this problem because it would increase your power consumption from the pumps in excess of what your turbines would produce.
Jess
September 13th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Dear Gigi,
Thanks for joining us here at smallHydro.com
There are a handful of things that you’ll probably want to do yourself before you hire out to a contractor for your hydroelectric site.
For starters I would suggest the following steps:
1. Make a list of estimated power usage from your current household power devices, break this into resistant or heating loads such as water heaters and electric stoves and inductive loads such as motors, pumps, and power supplies for computers and electronics. From this list you’ll estimate an average load to supply and a peak load requirement. You also need to know if it’s grid tie or not and if it’s 50 or 60 Hz single phase or three phase.
2. Next on the list is to measure the site head pressure from the difference in elevation of your intake versus your turbine elevation. For low head sites you’ll need altitude as well. For more on this see this post: http://smallhydro.com/small-micro-hydro-info/hydropower-head-measurements-3-methods/
3. Following the head measurement your made-to-measure your sites flow rate or volume of water per second in your stream. We will be posting on that shortly.
4. Additionally you’ll need to note any variability that occurs with the seasons. For many sites this can get pretty tricky but from what you indicated you have a pretty high average flow and as long as you stay well below that average you should be okay.
5. Once these parameters are understood for your site you can begin the process of looking for the right turbine manufacturer to match your sites power curve. You’ll also want to have an idea of the pen stock length, material and diameter. That will come in handy to compute friction losses in the pen stocks that can often account for a large fraction of your power in such a small unit as a Micro Hydro system.
6. From there you’ll need to iterate a few times to understand how to get the best return on investment or ROI for your hydropower system. Don’t forget in your calculations to include if there’s a problem with local power grid tie or not because that may end up costing a good deal of the system price itself if you are bringing the grid out to your remote site.
Jess
November 19th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
my creek is about 250 feet from my building
the dam is about 600 feet away
sometimes the flow dries up
so I dont want my batteries by the crrek or dam
I am concerned about direct current voltage drop
Should I get an alternating current generator
and convert the voltage to DC at the batteries by my building? Thanks
December 13th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
I have a spring with a three inch pipe pouring water into a dammed pond.
The flow of water from the the spring pipe is 30 gpm. Is this enough to generate electricity? What is a cheap way to find out?
Also, the pond is in a dammed ravine and the head is at least 15 feet. Water from the spring enters and exits the pond and the flow is probably 30 gpm as well.
Does it appear that I may have a resource that could possibly charge some deep cell batteries and provide some electricity to a “green” cabin that I am building? Cabin use will be infrequent.
December 23rd, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Dear Sir
Please send me a copy of Micro-Hydro operator and Micro Hydro Manager training Guideline and training course contents as soon as possible through my e-mail address.Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Krishna Bahadur Thapa
January 3rd, 2010 at 8:02 am
Hello,
I am going to be determining flow from a stream I have on my property. I ery much like the pipe method as described in your articles. How should I determine what size pipe to use? Should I size on the small size or larger size? Does a smooth bore culvert work? Thanks for your help.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:48 pm
i want some information related selecting the transformer for the system how would i select or design there is use of transformer or not in that place .
turbine design method
November 26th, 2010 at 3:41 am
Hello
I want to discuss about microhydro
December 1st, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Hi Jin,
What is it regarding smallhydro or microhydro?
Jess
January 21st, 2011 at 2:37 pm
I sent a long message re conduit hydro power
working with the U OF HARTFORD AND A LARGE LOCAL WATER CO.
working on several conduits from 20ftmgd to 40ft heads and 5mgd to
40 mgd each 1mile straight and 30 in. diam. your computer calculates
6KW to 96 kw . what is the highest efficiency microturbine you suggest.?
Thank you —Marty