Quote:
Originally Posted by AndrewJ
I need to dig up a paper i saw a few years back for a small private water power system near a stream, but it used a constant gravity feed vs an impulse feed.
Very compact and virtually no loss of potential energy on the way down ( unlike the big turbines ) but not sure how scalable ( or durable ) it would be in large scale, as i assume mechanical losses would go up accordingly.
( Think of it like a string of buckets on a looped rope that goes vertically the whole way from top to bottom. The weighted buckets on the rope always provide a constant torque supply so designing the turbine can be matched to suit.
Andrew
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I think I saw a TV show on that one. It was for a remote restaurant with the hydro setup and a wind turbine competing to power the place? Water taken from a stream some tens of meters above the site, run through a custom made turbine driving an automotive alternator and the discharge water returned to the stream?
Not even any sort of dam required to make it work, just run a pipe over the side of the bank up top, use a little vacuum to initially get the water over the top of the bank and down below the level of the intake and then let it siphon to get it flowing, really simple setup.