New member looking for help

[Dennis ODonovan]

Hi all,

I am based in Ireland (county cork) and I am looking for some help. I live in a rural area with lots of running water (it is ireland after all). I am looking to install my own hydro power station, but I am a complete novice in all things electrical.
I have about 25M (80') head of plentiful water.

I am looking at either a pelton type generator or a water wheel (if the head is not high enough).

Where I start to get lost is on the electrical side, I have so many questions I am not sure where to start -
1. What type of generator, I do not want to spend any money (well as little as possible) so I was thinking of using a 24v alternator from a truck to charge batteries and then convert to 240v. Is this feasible?
How much power can I expect, how many batteries would I need, what type of CD to AC converter do I need, generally HELP

Look forward to some advise, in the meantime I will start reading

[Jeff Birkle]

80' of head! i'm jealous!!!!!
A pelton will work the best there.

We will need lots more info from you.
What is the volume of water (litres per second)?
Are you Grid-tie or Battery bank based?
How much power do you consume?
How far is the turbine from the battery bank (grid)?
How much do you want to spend?

Try to give us as much info as possible.

Cheers

Jeff

[Dennis ODonovan]

Hi Jeff, thanks for your response and I am sorry I did not give more infor from the start. To answer your questions please see below -

The volume of water is very low (not so jealous now!!) in the winter about 5 litres/sec, in the summer about 2.5 litres/sec.

My house is connected to the grid, in Ireland we get 0.17 euro per KW sold back to the grid. My reason for prefering battery power is answered below.

I consume an average of 500w per hour in the summer and about 1KW per hour in the winter. I used a total of 12,800 KW in the last 12 months. The reason, well I have a geotherm heat pump for our heating and water supply (no solar), which at the time seemed a great idea, but the amount of power it uses seems extreme to me. So my thinking was that I am not going to be able to produce all of my electricty supply from hydro so perhaps if I could switch my heating system to hydro I would cut a massive part of my bill.

The stream is about 150metes from my house, but I planned to build a small shelter close to the stream that would include the battery supply and the transformer?

Finally spend, well since loosing my job more than 1 year ago money is quite tight so I cannot afford too much. I spent 1,925 euro on electricity in the last 12 months (12,800 KW). From the labour (labor for all you Americans) side of things I have free access to earth moving equipment, so piping the water flow will not be an issue.

My main concern as I mentioned at the start is that most blogs about the electrical side of things are too technical for me and I need an idiots guide to...

Thanks in advance and look forward to your response.

Dennis

[Mike Mitchell]

Dennis,
I am a bit new to this site myself,and i do not have any hydro sources on my land(other than a wet weather creek) but hydro has always interested me.I have been reading about it and following many projects on the net for years. The one thing i have discovered is there is no "idiots guide" to hydro because there are so many variables to each persons site.One thing i can tell you is to forget about a car alternator for any substantial power or reliability.What you want is a generator head,or induction motor. The chinese generator heads can be had reasonably cheap(look up ST generator).Induction motors are cheap and common,but require carfully matched capacitors and controls.Here is some information that may help:

In my opinion,considering your distance from the stream(150m~ was it?),high voltage without batteries is your best bet. If you can use this power directly,without batteries or transformers,it will be even cheaper and reliable(think K.I.S.S - Keep It Simple Stupid)the reason is it will save alot of money on wire(higher voltage = smaller wire)since copper is so expensive and a battery bank would cost huge $$.By high voltage i would assume at least 240v or 415v(whatever is common in europe). 415v would be best to make the distance if your heating can use this(maybe not possible since your sites 2354 watts may not be enough).Another option is to rectify the 240vac or 415vac to dc to feed a inverter like the sunnyboy for solar and grid-tie it(this may have legal problems and the inverters are not cheap).

You might want to read about what this guy did here, it is a great project and will give you alot of insight!
http://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html
I don't want to discourage you but don't assume this will be easy or cheap.You will need to be able to weld,fabricate,be an electrician,and planner to pull this off.you will need alot of big/cheap smooth (read PVC)pipe,a pelton turbine rotor,lots of wire,and if your weak on the electrical,you need to find some help that knows so you don't electrocute yourself or someone else or set the house on fire.

According to the hydro calculator here: http://www.alternate-energy.net/micro_hydro_calc.html with 80ft head and 5 liters/second flow you can get around 2354 watts from your stream at 60% efficiency,which with home built stuff may be feasible if done properly.Thats a large amount of power 24hours a day/7 days a week!
Most of us only wish we had a resource like this!!!

You will need to give special consideration to the intake and plumbing to get the best results of course.
Again,i don't claim know much about this stuff, but i think a pipeline of 6" pvc(152MM..damn metrics ;)pipe with a ST 5KW generator head coupled to a pelton wheel generating wild 415VAC would be the most efficient approach if you are after max power and assuming your heating runs off 415.. I think these generator heads can also be wired 240vac.If this will not run the heat pump direct,maybe it is possible to install another regular resistance heater that can be run by the hydro? Please realise that you cannot simply combine the hydro power to the house power this way,to do that you would have to use the sunnyboy inverter or simular grid tie inverter.

Hope this helps some, and good luck! don't kill anyone or yourself :eek:

Mike

OOPS! sorry! i made a mistake, in the calcs i used 80 meters head instead of 80ft(25M).. so the above figure of 2354watts available is wrong, it should be 736watts! so the above stuff is way overkill, and 4" pvc would probabaly do! The things that can happen when one number is wrong ;) sorry about that!

[Stewart Corman]

Dennis,
I agree with what Mike has said.
Yes, 6 inch PVC pipe would probably do for that flow rate, but at 100 gal/min, you might only need 4"? cost diff is significant

check out this site:
http://www.nooutage.com/turgo4.htm

I am confused by one of your numbers ...if you run geothermal as your sole heating source in winter and only use 1000KW/mo including all your other useage..it is very efficient (ie 350%?)

With hydro, you generally have fairly constant voltage, reasonably high rpm (ie 3600 rpm?) and can tailor the generator to give you high voltage output ( low transmission losses). Generators can be had new on eBay in the form of 1.0KW 3 phase PM 220v servo motors which run at 85% efficiency, so don't try to cobble one up yourself...I have seen many go for <$100USD

check out this surplus dealer:
http://stores.ebay.com/hgrauctions?_rdc=1

You want to avoid charging batteries for other than the initial cost and replacement after 5 + years. You lose 50% of all power generated in charging/discharging ...but water runs 24/7, so why would you want to store anything? use what you get ....direct resistance heating is 100% efficient and just heating domestic water saves about $15USD/month.

To get grid tie, the inverter can cost $3000USD ...why bother?
Forget about selling back to the grid!
You mention geothermal system ... how hard would it be to install a 2KW calrod water heating element (cost <$10USD) inline to supply heat? You could probably run the circ pump 24/7 from a single car battery and $30USD car inverter

Check my math:
You use about 1000KW per month (but less if geothermal is off?), so 750watts/hr = 18KW/day = 540KW/mo ...looks viable to me (sort of) ...flow is greater in winter when you need the heating

BTW, 750watts 24/7 continuous is NOT enough to heat your house in mid winter.
Someone more knowledgeable than me might have the answer how to run your geothermal off the pelton.

Stew Corman from sunny Endicott