Let's start my introducing myself and our situation.
My father in law has just retired and it has always been a tinkerer. What he lacks in knowledge or formal education he more than makes up for it in resourcefulness.
He (and I) lives in NW Spain, a very rainy part of the country, and quite mountainous. He has no less than 3 o 4 constant streams of water going through his property, of several kinds. I'm a software developer myself with some basic understanding of electronics and I also own a solar system (commercial, no batteries)
He has a spring with a water reservoir around 50 meters uphill from his home, that he has used as a source of drinkable water for his home for 5 decades. We measured 3.8bar at the bottom of the pipe. The flow rate will surely vary seasonally, but right now in winter no less than 6/7 litres/second. All this water is "wasted" anyway into an artificial waterfall in their garden (because when you put together a man with disposable time and several excavators and water springs, a garden waterfall is bound to happen). It's a shame we have all that flow and pressure and we do nothing with them but landscaping.
Then he also has another spring with not a lot of head by a higher flow, let's saw 10 or 12l/second, maybe more.
He's already experimenting with a water wheel for the low pressure high-volume spring. See attached video:
Let's be clear, we don't anticipate any of this to be generating a whole lot of energy nor to be 100% wise from an investment point of view, but still, we'd like to make this work for the love of doing it. But we need help with the generator-side of things.
Let's start with the water wheel:
On the video we're using a crude test harness, once installed in the real spring would have more than double the water flow seen on the video. What equipment to we need to generate power from it is our main question. My understanding is that we'd need some generator connected to controller of the likes of the ones used for wind turbines, but I don't know what kind of generator would be best (AC three phases? 12v? 24v? higher?) or controller. Also my understanding is that such controllers need some device to which they dump power when there's an excess of it. Also, what size generator would be ideal? How do we find out? Maybe getting an induction motor and turning it into a generator is the way to go?
As for the high pressure/low volume stream, building a pelton turbine is way beyond both our skills or equipment (tho I have access to a metal lathe in a maker space I belong to), so we'd like to purchase a mostly commercial turbine. I've seen plenty of them in aliexpress. In my experience stuff from aliexpress can range amazing-bang-from-the-buck all the way to an absolute scam, so I'd refrain from buying one unless anyone here has had any experience. Half the motors made in the planet are made in china, so some of them must be legit, but which ones?
If any of you know of a good video or article outlying the basic of how to size and white a generator to an spinning shaft I'd love to know. At the end the basics of wind/hydro are the same.
My father in law has just retired and it has always been a tinkerer. What he lacks in knowledge or formal education he more than makes up for it in resourcefulness.
He (and I) lives in NW Spain, a very rainy part of the country, and quite mountainous. He has no less than 3 o 4 constant streams of water going through his property, of several kinds. I'm a software developer myself with some basic understanding of electronics and I also own a solar system (commercial, no batteries)
He has a spring with a water reservoir around 50 meters uphill from his home, that he has used as a source of drinkable water for his home for 5 decades. We measured 3.8bar at the bottom of the pipe. The flow rate will surely vary seasonally, but right now in winter no less than 6/7 litres/second. All this water is "wasted" anyway into an artificial waterfall in their garden (because when you put together a man with disposable time and several excavators and water springs, a garden waterfall is bound to happen). It's a shame we have all that flow and pressure and we do nothing with them but landscaping.
Then he also has another spring with not a lot of head by a higher flow, let's saw 10 or 12l/second, maybe more.
He's already experimenting with a water wheel for the low pressure high-volume spring. See attached video:
Let's be clear, we don't anticipate any of this to be generating a whole lot of energy nor to be 100% wise from an investment point of view, but still, we'd like to make this work for the love of doing it. But we need help with the generator-side of things.
Let's start with the water wheel:
On the video we're using a crude test harness, once installed in the real spring would have more than double the water flow seen on the video. What equipment to we need to generate power from it is our main question. My understanding is that we'd need some generator connected to controller of the likes of the ones used for wind turbines, but I don't know what kind of generator would be best (AC three phases? 12v? 24v? higher?) or controller. Also my understanding is that such controllers need some device to which they dump power when there's an excess of it. Also, what size generator would be ideal? How do we find out? Maybe getting an induction motor and turning it into a generator is the way to go?
As for the high pressure/low volume stream, building a pelton turbine is way beyond both our skills or equipment (tho I have access to a metal lathe in a maker space I belong to), so we'd like to purchase a mostly commercial turbine. I've seen plenty of them in aliexpress. In my experience stuff from aliexpress can range amazing-bang-from-the-buck all the way to an absolute scam, so I'd refrain from buying one unless anyone here has had any experience. Half the motors made in the planet are made in china, so some of them must be legit, but which ones?
If any of you know of a good video or article outlying the basic of how to size and white a generator to an spinning shaft I'd love to know. At the end the basics of wind/hydro are the same.
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