Just joined

[Karen Patterson]

Just last night my husband and I started talking about setting up a mini hydro electric generator on our property. At first I mentioned doing a wind generator then he reminded me of the stream that we have running through our property. Water flows all the time, wind is not as relyable.

I was given the task of finding out whats available to get this project underway as I am disabled and can't work so have lots of time on my hands to do the nessacery research. My husband is an electrical engeneer by traid so he will be doing the actual instal.

Last night he started down a very technical track with me putting up stop signs asking for explanations. He has the technical back ground needed but I'm totally in the dark. He stated that we needed some kind of turbine that runs a generator with a switch of some sort to the power company grid then the wiring to our home.

So far all we have are beavers setting up dams on our stream to provide the necessary water flow! Or i should say, hopefully the necessary water flow.

First steps: how do we know if there is enough flow/drop to run the hydro turbine? Then we'll need to know what type of equipment is better than others. I have been doing some reading and so far found something about permanent magnet alternators.

THEN I found this site and was very impressed. Someone took a lot of time in setting this up. I have been in many simular comunities but not nearly so organised. Fantastic job! I'm looking forward to getting started on the right foot with y'alls help!

Karen Patterson

[Mark Parsons]

Welcome Karen,

I am perhaps in a similar situation. I have an off-grid log home cottage in the upper Ottawa Valley of Ontario, Canada and have devices in place harvesting hydro electrical and water pumping from the creek, wind, solar PV and solar SDHW.

The first order of business is determining your hydro potential. Please provide a description of your site. Photos would also be a benefit. The most important aspect of hydro is the head (height of fall of water available) and flow. These parameters should be defined pretty closely to ensure the best fit solution.

Beavers are an issue for me as well. Their efforts are not always appreciated.

Regards,
Mark

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Karen,

Welcome to Green Power Talk, and thank you for your kind words about the site! This is still a relatively new place on the Internet, and we can use many more members to add to the topics and content. So please spread the word!

There are several members here that have extensive hydro experience, Mark is one of them. So you'll be in good hands here. You're very lucky to have a running stream on your property, very few people have hydro available to them as an RE option. It's a good energy source, as you comment even at low power it can produce significant amounts of energy because it runs 24x7.

-Rob-

[Karen Patterson]

Mark, I'm impressed! Hydro, wind, and solar! Maybe someday we'll be able to utilize all three, but hopefully the hydro will be enough to at least cut down on the electric bill from the power company. We are thinking about selling back to them if we can generate enough.

I can get pictures, we have a digital camera and a resizing program to reduce size to upload. But where to I upload to and how do I post them in here?

Basicly we have a 'wet land' area filled with lots of natural springs. They all funnel into a stream area on our property where the beavers love daming it all up. This all dumps unto a 4 acer lake where the beaver's den is, that then has about a 6 foot drop to another lake. Unfortunatly the 6 foot drop is a shaired area with our community and not available for our use. There is a thought thou, maybe we could have a comunity hydro unit? Maybe worth looking into.

We have let the beavers go and they have about 6 dams built up on our property. When we were trying to discurrage them we had 2 really nice water drops of about 2 to 3 feet each with plenty of water running all the time. I'm just not sure what is needed or if this is enough. The stream is about 2 foot wide and about as deep when not dammed up. The larger dams are about 3 foot deep at the dam. These are all estiments. This area is about a acre total.

Thanks for your help.
Karen

[Karen Patterson]

Bob, are you responsible for this fantastic fourm? I have seen many of your posts and thank you for my initial welcome when I joined. I looked through all the stuff under the hydro headings and copied pasted the links for my husband, Jim, to look at later. Thank-you for having all that available.

Jim and I purchased this place about 4 years ago mainly because of the lake. We both love fishing and hunting. It's wooded and we take at least one deer off it each season. We get cat fish, bass, crapy, and snapping turtles from the lake. It use to be a paid fishing area before it was developed into this comunity. We live on the first of a serious of 3 lakes then there is one stand alone lake as well. Our property has the source for the 3 lake serious.

I think I shocked the realitor because when we drove up to this place I told him I LOVED it even before I saw the inside of the house. I said "we can stop looking now" he said "dont you want to even LOOK inside?" I said "nope". He looked at my husband and they both shrugged. I have loved living here.

Thank you again for this fourm, and YES, I'll tell as many as I can about it. BTW, LOVE your "This message was entirely written using recycled electrons"
Karen

[Mark Parsons]

I can get pictures, we have a digital camera and a resizing program to reduce size to upload. But where to I upload to and how do I post them in here?

Basicly we have a 'wet land' area filled with lots of natural springs. They all funnel into a stream area on our property where the beavers love daming it all up. This all dumps unto a 4 acer lake where the beaver's den is, that then has about a 6 foot drop to another lake. Unfortunatly the 6 foot drop is a shaired area with our community and not available for our use. There is a thought thou, maybe we could have a comunity hydro unit? Maybe worth looking into.

We have let the beavers go and they have about 6 dams built up on our property. When we were trying to discurrage them we had 2 really nice water drops of about 2 to 3 feet each with plenty of water running all the time. I'm just not sure what is needed or if this is enough. The stream is about 2 foot wide and about as deep when not dammed up. The larger dams are about 3 foot deep at the dam. These are all estiments. This area is about a acre total.


Hi Karen,

Pictures are pretty easily inserted using the manage attachments tool when entering a post. It is the paperclip icon in the post header. Rob states that this forum software 'automagically' sizes your photos. Just browse and upload the raw photo resolution.

An easy approximate rule of thumb that I remember is hydro Watts = Head in feet * Flow in GPM / 10. I can't get a grasp on the flow amount from your description. I gather that about 3 feet of head is readily available.

An off-the-shelf option you may seriously consider is the ES&D LH1000 low head turbine. At 39" (1M) head and 700GPM the LH1000 is rated 200 Watts.
http://www.microhydropower.com/ Click products and then LH1000 to get more details.
Paul Cunningham, the owner of ES&D is very well respected, and the couple of dealings I have had with him have been pleasant.

The beavers will try to close off the entrance flume to the turbine. Your challenge will be to prevent them doing this. The only solution I found is trapping the beavers out since I am only at my cottage intermittently. If you are present and monitor the site frequently you may find other solutions.

Regards,
Mark