Rick Is Thinking WEIRD Again...

[rake60]

You all know just how off the wall I can be so this thought should be of no surprise to those
of you who know me.

Oil prices went out of control and did their damage.
Now those prices have dropped like a rock and created a new way to exact damage.

There are 3 basic FREE energy sources.

Solar: Too expensive to be a viable resource with today's technology.
Wind: Unreliable and expensive to install and maintain.

The third is Gravity.
About 200 years ago the water flow of a river or stream was diverted to flow over or under
a wooden paddle wheel that would drive a line shaft in the ceiling of a textile mill, machine shop ,
hammer mill, feed mill, etc.
Today that gravity driven force of falling water directly drives electrical generators.

We can build small compressed air operated engines that will run on 10 PSI of air that generate enough
power to run accessory machines of the same scale.

If the power of falling water was used to operate a compressor, how many turbines could be operated
by the engines it might support?

I told you it was weird thought!
If you've bothered to read it this far, it's not MY fault!

Rick

 

[Kludge]

First off, it IS your fault and you should be ashamed!

Second, it depends on the waterfall. The compressor too but the waterfall we can't control quite so well unless we build the dam etc and even then it depends on rainfall and ... okay, let's not go there.

Okay, so we build a basic compressor - a multicylinder oscillating affair all of which are check valved into a surge tank then fed to an engine. (Actually, this is also a vacuum pump so if you still have vacuum windshield wipers, you can kill two stones with one bird.) So ... how big's your waterwheel and how much of a waterfall do you have to play with?

The meds are playing with my head but I'm sure (read as: I hope) Marv can jump in with the math to get this working in some grandeloquent fashion. I can see the solution; I just can't find the math to do it even though I know that I know what it is.

Oh, yeah. When you mentioned "weird" and "gravity" at the same time, I was a bit worried you were going to start using falling apples or something. ;D

BEst regards,

Kludge

 

[Cedge]

Solution...
1,000,000 water pressure engines!!... but I'll definitely need the bigger lathe...bwahahahaha

Steve

 

[Philjoe5]

OK Rick, here's an off the top of my head thought on this problem you've put forth on us. Water at some height, H, has potential energy. When it falls against a water wheel or turbine, the potential energy is converted into kinetic energy, ie, movement of the turbine or waterwheel at some efficiency. So, Kludge has hit on some of the variables you have to know before you can do the math. The potential energy of the water can be found if we know H, the height its going to fall. The flow of water has to be known in say, gallons per minute, so we can find power from work (or energy) per unit time. Once we have power on the turbine shaft, then we need to correct that for efficiency to power the compressor...more details needed, but are you suggesting I power my model engines by using the Susquehanna River? In a way I do, 'cause there are two hydroelectric dams on that river no more than 30 miles from my house. :big: :big:

Cheers,
Phil

 

[jack404]

Rick it all depends on the ammount of fall ( height the water falls down) you have with the water

this is combined with the ammount of flow ( how much water is falling)

i helped build a generator in bouganville ( a island off new guinea) with a mate who is electrical minded

a 25 foot water fall with a 30 gallon flow makes enough electricity to power a village

meaning 50 light globes 3 deep freezers and a community TV and satillite system with heaps to spare

and this is a pretty basic setup in the jungle

a bloke not far from where tel lives has a series of 12 volt car alternators generating all his house and shop power

he is blessed for australia ( water is a on again, off again thing here) he has a mountain behind him that soaks up water and it leaks out along a basalt line and he catches it and directs all the drips along a 200 meter line and directs it to his setup then into his dam, its not a big flow ( ammount of water) but its got a lot of fall , over 100 ft.

its doable if you have the water and the fall

cheers

jack

 

[dsquire]

Rick

I think maybe you have hit on something here. Everyone here could build a waterwheel or turbine to power a generator that will be hooked into the power grid. Now most of these will be small power but could be larger to utilise what ever water stream one has.

I can hear it now. Most of you are saying that you have no water to power your waterwheel. Wrong! We just have to redo the plumbing slightly and we have our waterfall. Go down to the basement and open up the drain pipe before it enters the sewer. Just the gray water, not the toilet. Install your waterwheel here. Now everytime you have a shower, Laundry, wash etc the waterwheel spins driving the small electrical generator that you built to put energy back into the power grid.

Now one little generator isn't going to light up the world but 1 cent isn't much either. 100,000.000 cents equal $1,000.000.00.

This could just be the tip of the iceberg. How about some more brilliant ideas?

Cheers :bow:

Don

 

[jack404]

Rick, folks

this aint weird thinking

i am working on a wind based system that makes its own wind!

Crazy? narrhh optomistic?? narrh in fact i stole the idea

from ants...

the outback in Oz has some clever ants

i like your thoughts too Don

little fish in big numbers is a lot of food..

cheers

jack

 

[shred]

During one of the last energy price spikes, some enterprising people were going around rebuilding and restarting old water-powered mill equipment in the New England area and turning them into mini-hydro installations, selling the power back to the utilities. Seemed like a neat idea here, but my water flow is very sporadic. I'd do better with solar by far.

 

[ksouers]

Not so weird at all, Rick. I've always thought the solution to our energy problems was going to be on a micro scale. Energy independence will have to be truly independent, millions of us "little people" producing our own electricity and selling it back to the utilities. The utilities then essentially become brokers. Some days you will produce more than you need and sell it, other times you will need more and have to buy it. But until we reach that saturation point we are stuck with what we've got.

There won't be any one solution. Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, ocean tides and currents. Whatever. It'll be millions, billions, of small solutions based on your own unique situation creating a common commodity to be bought and sold on the common market.

It only takes about 35 horsepower-hour to run a house with 200 amp service at full capacity. Most of the time will be much less than half of that since you don't always need full capacity.

For what it's worth, I'm in the planning stages for taking my shop off the grid, making it totally energy independent. I'm looking at a combination of solar and wind with a gasoline fueled backup generator. The nasty part is using batteries to store the energy until it's needed. A couple deep-cycle batteries should be sufficient. Who knows, maybe from there I can move to powering other systems in the house.


Kevin

 

[artrans]

My be far fetched but picture this use our boiler. On the return side the water pass,s a paddle thats hooked to an alternator every time the boil calls for heat the return water being pumped though the system is our little water fall in the winter thats a lot of energy. ;D ;D

 

[artrans]

hello all this is exactly what I was trying to do with that question what can be done in a this economy to make money. Its about starting a idea and getting differant input that makes new ideas surface that you or me alone would not make come to light. Of cause its only and idea and nothing my come of it. But if any of you have read the book think and grow rich he Mr hill talks about this very subact that when differant people come together and start taking on a problem a solution will surface even when its not your speclity. sorry hard to explain and my writing skills are not the best hope you get the idea thanks art

 

[raggle]

SWMBO and I are generally amazed that here in Wales, to where we moved last year, there is a helluva lot of water. Afon Hafren flows within a quarter of a mile from our house before it crosses the border into England and changes its name to River Severn. it has countless tributaries many of which are fast flowing in wet times. The amazement stems from the relative absence of hydro power schemes. We know of a few and they are by no means unsightly, in fact barely visible.

We can also see, just on the skyline, a huge windfarm. Given that when the wind drops fossil fuelled power stations are needed as backup, they need to be kept on standby. Not particularly green, I'd say. No, I'm not anti-windfarm, though many people are.

A lady campaigning against them pointed out that the cost of roads needed to transport the huge turbines to site could never be recovered from the value of the electricity produced in their service lifetime. My riposte to that was it provided work but the earnings could only be spent on imported goods.

Given the variability of wind my opinion is that it would be better to use wind energy to pump water into high holding ponds, surface or subterranean until needed. The water is then a battery to be turned on for turbines only as required. Such a project already exists (though not wind powered) at Port Dinorwic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_power_station

What has this to do with HMEM? Ok, if you have a sloping site (or a small country where it always rains) get you a big tank at the highest point and another at the lowest with a water turbine somewhere near the bottom. Use a windmill to catch the excess energy and pump it to the top. Arrange for the flow to stop when there is no electrical load.

More info: http://www.cat.org.uk/index.tmpl?refer=index&init=1

Coo, might run me Unimat from a water wheel

Ray

 

[Brian Rupnow]

Hey Rick---I'm way ahead of you----kinda----sorta----(Well actually, the one in my back yard is only there for ornamental value)--It ran all summer and fall, but now the creek is frozen solid and there is 15" of snow on top of it!!!--You have to admit though---It is a different way to use a bunch of s.s. soup ladles.

 

[mklotz]

It all depends on WHY you are doing this.

If you want to generate your own power just for the survivalist/ecological satisfaction you derive from doing it then, yes, you can do it assuming you have adequate head and flow and can cope with the severe frictional losses involved in gearing up a low speed water wheel to drive a generator (very few will have the facilities to install a penstock and direct drive a generator as is done in power plants).

OTOH, if you look at it as a practical engineering problem, I'm pretty damn sure that the expense in terms of time, planning, equipment, fabrication and maintenance will never allow you to generate power for a price less than the cost of commercially supplied power any time within our lifetimes. There's a very good reason for the fact that we don't see thousands of small scale hydro-generators operating in every small municipality.

 

[Brian Rupnow]

Back in the very early sixties, when I was in high school, I had a summer job as an electricians helper. Ontario Hydro had just ran a feeder line into one of the northern lakes near Algonquin park, not far from where I grew up. One of the cottages we were wiring for hydro electric had a fast running stream beside it, and the enterprising cottage owner had damned the stream and put in a penstock and water-wheel which ran a car generator, which in turn charged a bank of 12 volt car batteries. The entire cottage was wired with automotive car wire, and each room was lighted by a 12 volt bulb. I remember thinking at the time what a great use of a free resource it was. The fact that he was having it wired for 110 volt A.C. now that it was available did not diminish the cottagers creativity in my eyes.

 

[rake60]

I have been a model builder since my early teen years.
At the age of about 13 I came up with a plan to build small lamp that would
operate without batteries. It involved a clock mainspring a pendulum for speed control,
several little plastic pulleys robbed from broken toy, tools, radios and tape players,
and few thin rubber bands as drive belts.
The final load was a motor out of an old 8 track tape player that would put out a small
current to a flashlight bulb.

I spent months playing with that crazy idea.
At that age I was never able to get it to work well
but I did get the bulb to flicker a few times!
:big:

 

[shred]

Marv's correct that there are great economies of scale to be had with power generation and transport. There's a reason mills and factories no longer have their waterwheels and steam engines and all.

Micro-power generation can be cost-effective in certain cases, but mostly is a 'because I can' thing. Not that that should stop any HMEM-er. ;D

 

[rake60]

When you are bombarded with information like this it forces you to think!

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqyZ9bFl_qg[/ame]

I'm quite aware of just how how old I've become and understanding the the next level of
of what might be possible in the model builders craft is sometimes a little hard to grasp.

My skull may get thicker with age but my desire to learn and create hasn't matured a bit.

Rick

 

[Bernd]

Think of that video as taking a car assembly line down to the size of an atom. It's like building a car one atom at a time.

Bernd

 

[rodbuilder]

One thing to think about is you have a free source of power coming into your house if we tap into it. Think of all the water running into your house of the water main. If you put a small turbine in the main line then no matter where the water is going it will generate power. I say its free because you are paying by the gallon of water not the pressure used. Look at it this way if you turn on the sink water comes out, let it do a little work on its way to your hand. This would only provide small amounts of short lived energy that needs to be stored, but it is free energy (well sort of).