Friday, 21 March 2014

Renewable energy, Mirco hydro.

I came across this article, WORLD WATER DAY 2014 FACT AND FIGURES. I was amazed how many people live without water, sewage and power,Its 2014 A hundred years ago we used natural resources. There are hundreds of thousands old sites that gave power to mills sitting idle and with power consumption to increase by up to 30% by the year 2035, its time we start using these. If each one of these sites only produced 3 or 4 kw's each, this would be millions of kw's a year. As most of the infrastructure is in place. To me Its a no brainier.

Thursday, 27 February 2014

Floating water trbine, Putting the power in your hands

Online Graphing

As promised this is the power curve chart for my floating water turbine. It shows the potential power that should be capable from the turbine with 3 different size fins attached at 66% efficiency .I asked kickstarter.com if I could join them but they don't cover Ireland so I may try and find an investor or partner to help produce these. I think if you want more power than these' 2 or more can be joined together or spaced behind each along the river, The same app if fitted on a weir or water fall.As these trials are taking place in a river not in a tank in a lab .over the last 3 weeks the river has increased in dept by about 2 meters,6 feet and the device has taking it rising and lowering with the flow It is recommended a min dept of 12 inch's is required ,as below that the amount of power produced would not justify the cost but will work with as little as 4 inch's Hope ye find this interesting and leave a comment

Wednesday, 19 February 2014

in stream floating micro hydro turbine

Hi just to let ye know am still doing trials on my floating turbine it s in 12 inch's of water flowing at about 3 ft a sec and there is 3 fins in the water at a time. It works great but when I increase the power it starts to jump the cogs .Will have to find a way of attaching a tension  cog to it [any suggestions would be appreciated ] once i get over this problem I will be able to let ye know the power i can get

Thursday, 13 February 2014

How to calculate power from a floating water turbine

I calculate the power you can get from a floating water turbine ,first you need to know the flow rate.This is done by marking off a section of the river for this trial we make off 30 ft on the river bank.
Now throw a floating object about 6 ft in front of this and with a stop watch see how long it takes to trail the 30 ft you might need to repeat this several times to get it right .So if it takes 6 seconds to travail the 30 ft we know the flow is 5 ft a second .
I decided that the size of my fins is 1.5 ft in height and 3 ft in length .

Now to work out the power multiply the height by the length by the flow rate by the fall which =to the depth of the fin . this works whether you have 1 ft or 50 ft of water as its the flow speed makes the power not the dept of water
so 1.5 x 3 x 5 x 1.5 = 33.75 now divide this by 11.8 =2.86 kw this 100% if the machine is working at 75%
multiply 2.86 by .75=  2.14 kw this is the power you can get
I'v looked at some sites and they clam to be getting x power from there turbines when it defy s all calculations ,but then may be their calculations are daily not hour rates
The old saying paper wont refuse ink ?

Friday, 31 January 2014

micro hydro power

the machine on the weir is still working away no problems
i have to take out the in stream machine and make some changes that i've come across
hope to have it back in the river early next week