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I've been thinking about installing a domestic micro-hydro in our garden and was wondering if anyone has gone down this route?
We have a water source running under our drive with about about a 30 foot drop just before it and a fair amount of flow.
Have contacted the Energy Savings Trust to see what funding if any is available but thought I'd see if anyone has any experience.
Some really great youtube stuff of real world examples - from what you describe a Pelton wheel powered by a low volume / high velocity - pressure jet sounds like what you are planning
There are some great re-purposed washing machine motors ( the multi-coil type) for the generator
One issue I have picked up is the controller needs to be able to detect the correct point in the voltage current curve to get the best efficiency - one designed for solar will not give time for the wheel to spin up to get a full output curve
But in the uk your biggest issue might be that technically you extract the water when you take it from the stream and that is a big issue that you probably will not get permission for - even if you put the water back at the bottom of the garden.
My mate Andrew has a business specialising in this kind of thing if you need some professional advice.
He even rides a bike 🙂
http://www.350energy.co.uk/hydro
Thinking about it. Some planning sorted out to store power.
Do Ikea not do home batteries now as they do solar panelling? If so, that might be a 'cheap' way to get power storage sorted.
So our plan is to store it as heat. We’ve gone for a slightly oversized thermal store circa 500l to give us capacity and it’s studded with 1kw immersion’s. This gives us the chance sort out a suitable load without complex electronics.
A few years ago we hired a house at the top end of Glen Trool (you pass it if you do the long XC route linking Kirroughtree and Glen Trool) which is totally off-grid and gets power from a small hydro scheme. There was an entire building, about the size of a double garage, dedicated to storage batteries. Load balancing, which is something normally done on a central basis, takes a bit of getting used to.
How reliable is the water source through the year? Our neighbour re-installed a hydro system in April (the house was one fo the first in the area - in the country even - to have electricity and still has its own turbine house) Then the summer we've just had happened and the watercourse was bone dry for 4 months.
So will your turnbine still turn in the summer? If you're using it for heat will it still turn when the temperature drops below zero?
Thanks for the answers and ideas.
For clarification, the water course is the old lade that feeds off the Leithen Water up near the bridge at the Golfie in Innerleithen, runs down the side of the road and then drops. It used to drop in our garden over a sluice and power the mill via a wheel before continuing down through Innerleithen, powering more mills, printers and a sawmill. I think 10 in total, before it exited back into the Leithen Water and then the Tweed.
When these houses were built the water was diverted and now flows through a pipe and exits under our drive before continuing.
There is a good flow all year, even this year. I think my biggest stumbling block will be getting permission even though we would be reverting it back to its former glory as a renewable power source.
Not sure I like the idea of a building full of batteries though and we aren't flush with space here.
If you're on the grid and using it for heat then you don't really need load balancing and batteries. You could look at an electric Aga, they can run off a standard 13A socket so if you could achieve a 3kW supply could be ideal. The advantage as I'd see it over solar or wind is its 24/7 and potentially 365 or at least would corelate better with when you need heat in the cold wet winter months!
The other easy way to use the energy is to convert your lighting to 12V, it can then be run directly off batteries charged from an intermittent renewable source like a wind turbine or solar.
Take a look at the navitron forum.... loads of info there.
https://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index.php?board=11.0
Not sure I like the idea of a building full of batteries though and we aren’t flush with space here.
Presumably you don't need batteries if on the grid too - you do what the solar people do, effectively sell the power you make to the grid, reducing your bill. The downside will be unlike solar there is a very small pool of people who can do this with hydro so minimal commercial support to help you, and no doubt the volume curve affects the price of the necessary hardware.