homemade hydroelectricity

[El Barto]

water is pretty cheap, i wonder if its cheap enough for me to use my tap water to run a hydroelectric generator

then use that electricity to run my house and sell rest back to power company(if you can actually sell it to em?) and come out financially better off?

excluding setup cost any think its possible?

[psili sausage]

The idea of hydroelectricity is to use water that is already moving, like rivers/waterfalls.

A lot of resources are already used to provide clean running water for us, I don't think that idea is viable. Besides, there wouldn't be enough water pressure to turn the turbine...

[El Barto]

i know thats the idea ,but im not causing the water to be moving its pressurized when it get to me, it cost more for me to obtain non pressurized water

and i know if not viable for society and is counter productive but is viable as an individual taking advantage of how cheap water is

the pressure it comes from the tap would be useless in a turbine but putting a nozzle on will increase the pressure and im only talkin about turning a 1footish turbine not one on a dam

i dont really dought one can make hydroelectricity at home with tap water but i just dont know if you could make enough to run a house and if the money value of the of the electricy would be higher than the water bill

[Magicdirt]

I've seen a setup with a small waterpump used to run a generator that is driven by mains pressure water. Rather than pumping water the water pump is placed on the water main ideally before any taps and becomes a water driven motor.

Everytime the water is used it runs and generates electicity.

It doen't produce much, but for a semi-rural area with town water every bit helps.

Why watse it ? pressurised water is stored energy all you need to release the energy is to turn on a tap.

It wouldn't be economical to run the tap just generate power, but it can be used to generate a few watts everytime you turn on the tap.

Edit should this thread be up in the sustainable technologies section ?

[psili sausage]

Valid point MD. I can see the benefit of "tapping into" the pressure to produce a little power when water is being used.

We live in an upside down world, however, if people are considering using tap water pressure to power their homes because it's more ecconomical than mains power.

[kindness]

I understand what you are getting at EB, (I think) - I'm pretty sure you are just asking hypothetically? Interesting thought.

I really like what you are doing MagicDirt! Do you have pictures and where / how did you install it? Sounds like the kind of device that could potentially add to user produced power in a big way...

[Magicdirt]

It wasn't my setup, it was an engineer that I worked with years ago.

The pump has to be a positive displacement type (as opposed to a pump like a car water pump) as an inneficient pump with loose tolerances would be unlikely to work ie the water would take the path of least resistance and not turn the impeller of the pump.

With a positive displacement pump it would cause a pulsation of the water on the output side of the pump. So to eliminate the pulsations an accumulator would have to be fitted after the pump but before any taps.

An accumulator is the large bell looking thing that you see on top of pumps attached to tanks and bores. It has a bladder filled with compressed air which works as a shock absorber and regulates the water pressure.

The setup I saw was on an irrigation line in the back yard so pulsations weren't an issue.

When I saw this setup water was almost free and it was on semi rural property which was irrigated with mains water, so it did produce enough power to be worth the effort.

Maybe a second hand pump off a water tank could be adapted- the electric motor could be replaced with a generator. The motor it comes with would most likely produce some power as it is, but it would be very inefficient.

These days water costs a lot more so I don't know how economical it would be.

[kindness]

I'd always wondered what those bell bits at the top of water pumps were for - thanks for clearing that up for me, noice.

My thoughts about generating power from mains water were that, (as you noted) it's stored energy - it may as well be put to good use however small the gain is.

I've always wondered about wind generators on cars too... what is the gain and what is the loss because of drag? Do they cancel each other out? I'm not about to look into it coz I'm too busy with other stuff. I just like to think out loud

[peace

[El Barto]

yea completely hypothetical

i always wondered why they didnt make parts of a car wheel out ouf magnetic material and put coils in the wheel well

and why the service lanes on freeways arnt solar panels

[ThunderIdeal]

there is technology to slow a car down using a generator as the brake. i think each wheel is a motor/generator, power is sent to the wheels to accelerate, and when braking the wheels become generators. it's quite clever and makes a lot of sense. kinetic energy can also be stored for a boost to acceleration, they're looking at using these for the trucking industry and i'm pretty sure it's been allowed for a while now in formula one (each car can use a certain amount of boost maybe three times per race for overtaking).

putting a wind generator on a car, i'm not sure there'd be a point. at best it would take and provide as much power as a belt-driven generator, but then there is the wind speed itself to complicate matters and the fact that often a car is just sitting there idling.

[niggles]

How did this end up in the degenerated threads?

Seems a valid topic to me!

[mud]

Valid indeed.

Hey,

if gravity pulls everything down.

Why cant we direct that natural objection to flight,

back down into a wheel

by opposing 2 different forces (the one dragging a falling human forwards, and the one that can be distributed through an anatomically integral skeletal structure) back down through a lever

that again pushes back toward the body that is pushing against the fall?

gravity+redirecting opposing forces of body weight+ arc momentum

and transmuting through a pressure interchange

should =

free energy to drive a wheel derived from only gravity+ a correctly aligned series of human tendons?

[Magicdirt]

Valid indeed.

Hey,

if gravity pulls everything down.

Why cant we direct that natural objection to flight,

back down into a wheel

by opposing 2 different forces (the one dragging a falling human forwards, and the one that can be distributed through an anatomically integral skeletal structure) back down through a lever

that again pushes back toward the body that is pushing against the fall?

gravity+redirecting opposing forces of body weight+ arc momentum

and transmuting through a pressure interchange

should =

free energy to drive a wheel derived from only gravity+ a correctly aligned series of human tendons?

 

That sounds a lot like a pushbike

[mud]

nah, im dreamin that u can just stand like a tree..

in mountain pose, or some other yogic position

and capture gratity, thorugh a couple of levers...

please tell me u couldnt find circle and arcs that externalised the bodies

own center of gravity

and simply redirected the natural push of stars,

into a genernator of any kind.

I dreamt up some angles that just inerstected at the right points

and allowed gaias

heartbeat to be the electricity that fueled the world

ok, its more like being able to fly, just cos you're leaning forwards ;)

I've got a sketch, buts it a crappy one..