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Off Grid Via Slow Moving River?

Posted by michael on from the make-sure-you-have-plenty-of-candles dept.

einstein writes "I live out in the middle of nowhere, and I lose power at the drop of a hat. My house is right next to the Susquehanna river, and all the kinetic energy going past my house makes just want to go off grid. Most homebuilt hydro power is lower volume/high speed. What would be a good, unobtrusive way to generate electricity from a high volume/low speed body of water? I'm between two large hydro dams, so the water level is fairly constant, but does tend to fluctuate 4-6ft in the winter due to ice floes and melting snow. I think maybe a miniature version of one of the recent submerged tidal generators might work... Does anyone have some suggestions on how I might go about this project?" More than a few people have done this before.

24 of 452 comments (clear)

  1. Stay on-grid while generating power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you manage to generate your own power (wind, water, solar, whatever), stay on the grid because YOU can feed the grid, and the power company (usually) has to credit you. Yes, keep some of your own power stored up in batteries, but sell the excess and pay off the costs of setting this up.

    1. Re:Stay on-grid while generating power by JPriest · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I recently priced out a system to power a 4 bedroom house. I think I figured out it would cost $20,000 (US) just to power the house durring daylight hours (and offload to grid). At night hours I would have to pull from the grid. I think it is actually a law that the electric company has to buy back extra electricity. The only hard part is that you have to send a pure sine wave, and if the electric company is repairing something with the grid down they have to be aware that you are offloading so you don't zap them (this is called Islanding).

      If I wanted to put the systems on batteries I would have to spend much much more. I don't want ot use half my garage for a pile of car batteries. Anyway, it would take around 30 years to pay off a solar powered system here (north US). I looked at hydro power (as I aslo have a large creek on my property), but few people seem to be selling hydro systems and I would need special permission.

      --
      Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
    2. Re:Stay on-grid while generating power by emptor · · Score: 2, Insightful

      'the river' is owned by the People, at least here in the US. All navigable waters are publicly owned. And if you can float a log down it, it's navigable.

  2. Re:The Romans by mikewas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Probably easier to build a dock, floating or fixed. A dock is something that the local officials will understand so any permits or approvals should be easy. Then attach the paddlewheels.

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    "Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
  3. John Ashcroft by EventHorizon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We need government approval to think? Damn. That's worse than 198

    [MESSAGE CENSORED FOR YOUR PROTECTION]

  4. Height differential? by ramk13 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You either need water moving at a good velocity (kinetic) or some sort of height difference (potential) to generate a reasonable amount of power. (assuming you don't want a enormous paddle) I doubt you'll be able to dam the river in any way yourself without getting some sort of permit, because dams can have serious environmental impacts.

  5. Re:Legal ? by gleekmonkey · · Score: 4, Insightful
    How is it more 'irresponable' to use water as a source of energy rather than wind or sunlight? I wasn't under the impression that waterwheels were perticularly damaging to the environment.

    On the positive side, if everyone by a river did build one of these things, there would be less need for coal powerplants - THOSE are destructive to the environment.

  6. Don't reinvent the (water) wheel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I would do just as the parent says, some of this research will be invaluable. There are things which you probably haven't thought of like

    filtering: stopping debris getting in
    anti-fouling: preventing the buildup of algae and weed
    governing: stopping the wheel going too fast in a storm

    There is doubless a lot of 'lost knowledge' about - people have been doing this for hundreds of years and most likely the best solution is low tech rather than high tech.

  7. Of course its bloody legal. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    LOL. Of course its legal.
    Have you any idea what a waterwheel even IS.
    Its a round shaped piece of WOOD.
    At one time every mill in England was powered this way - it was only when the industrial revolution brought cheap mined coal that the environment started to go to shit.

    I think you are wondering 'how could it be legal for someone to get FREE electricity?'

    Well the strange news for city dwellers is that you can get pretty much anything Nature provides for free outside Metropolis - free clean water, free electricity, free natural gas, free fuel. You know you can even grow your own food and its LEGAL to eat it. We have a wood burning stove and guess what its LEGAL to put sticks on it, we have never had a lawsuit from the trees.

    Its kind of sad that people are so cloistered and urbanised that when someone mentions doing what man has been doing for 2000+ years you ask 'Is it Legal?' Not everything in life must be by appeal to authourity, some people just LIVE, the way they want to with what is available, most often this is a better balance with nature than an industrialisded approach and has minimal impact on the environment. You don't shit on your own doorstep in the wild.

    1. Re:Of course its bloody legal. by CyBlue · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you analyze the post carefully, they're not talking about a waterwheel with some stream feeding it, they're talking about a substantially large "paddle-wheel" sitting out in the river (such as the ones driving old 1800's steam ships). A waterwheel such as the ones powering a mill would require a vertical drop at least as tall as the wheel. With the river conditions he's describing, there is no such vertical drop. Being from England, you're obviously not familiar with laws regarding navigable waterways here in the US. The US Army Corps of Engineers is probably in charge of this river and therefore a huge set of rules apply to any structures built on it.

  8. Re:does this remove energy from the current? by jandrese · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'd feel comfortable assuming he's not going to convert any of the water's mass directly into energy. Still, an above poster noted that the downstream dam just stores the water in a resivor, so they won't notice the difference from this project.

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    I read the internet for the articles.
  9. Re:Township Approval by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are watershead and pollution issues involved as well.

    The state environmental regulatory groups (EPA EPD DEP, whatever) monitor this crap because whenever you take energy from a river system you cause an increase in things like sedimentation--in addition to whatever kind of pollution your system leaks into the water.

    Big power companies get away with it because, well, because they're big power companies, but it's very possible that you'll have to pay some liscensing fees and/or get some kind of water permit/pollution fees.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  10. Stupid Romans by fm6 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The party line in all the history books I've read is that the Romans had water mill tech, but it only accounted for a tiny portion of their flour production. The Roman economy was based on plentiful slave labor, so finding way to do things with fewer people (in this case, hand-powered versus water-powered mills) was not a big priority.

    If you know of references that rebut the standard historical theory (wouldn't be the first time), please post links or titles. I'd want to read them

    Anyway, it's my understanding that water mills began serious development during the "Middle Ages". Modern Western culture is descended from the great cultural renaissance of the 15th century, and we've inherited their prejudice against the "Middle Ages", that 1000-year period after the fall of Rome where Western progress supposedly ground to a halt. But this period was when people started playing with technology seriously, and thinking about ways to use it to make life easier -- and to get rich. In short, it was the period that gave birth to the techno-geek!

    1. Re:Stupid Romans by fm6 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That only works as long as you don't have to compete with another country that uses more modern methods. The last major power to abandon slavery discovered this the hard way.

    2. Re:Stupid Romans by fm6 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      ...convince me about the middle ages were a time when tech was taken seriously.
      When you put it like that, it's impossible to view the middle ages as anything but a regression in human progress. But when you do put it like that, you're reducing 1,000 years to a simplistic idea. That's a lot of history. Consider how much change the Western world has gone through in just the last couple of centuries, and how many different attitudes there were towards these changes.

      The right way to think about the middle ages is as a long period of history shared by a many diverse peoples. Their scientific and technological accomplishments may seem puny by our standards, but they were crucial to human progress. Improved crop rotation, use of wind and water power, the beginnings of chemistry... it's a long list.

      You want sources? Well, I'm reading Western Europe in the Middle Ages, by Joseph Strayer. This book argues a lot of the things I just said, but it's not primarily about science or technology. I think you'll find the arguments I just made in any history of the middle ages written in the last 20 years. I mean serious history, not the watered-down nonsense they put in standard secondary-school textbooks.

  11. Local Opinion by fadethepolice · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I too live near the susquehanna river.

    I have thought about this problem a lot over the last two years. My solution is low-cost, durable, and effective I believe, but does not work when the river is frozen. Use a small paddle wheel surrounded by square styrofoam floatation device. have the floataton device and a rod that functions like a broom handle connect to the paddle wheel at the axis point. As the water level changes the wheel will stay at a constant distace from the water as it rises and falls with the styrofoam around it. have the paddle wheel connect to an alternator using a rubber belt. Use the broom handle to maintain the tension between them. Attach the far end of the broom handle to a wire strung between two trees on each bank. Float 20 or 30 of these across the river and you can get some good amps. Gotta go help cook easter dinner, fill in the rest with your imagination... lol

  12. Funnel by tpledger · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Most homebuilt hydro power is lower volume/high speed. What would be a good, unobtrusive way to generate electricity from a high volume/low speed body of water?

    Would a big submerged horizontal funnel act as a current transformer? I'm picturing a slow flow into the wide end and a fast flow out of the narrow end. If that works, you'd be in a better position to use regular equipment.

    A couple of details:

    • Put a deflector grille over the wide end so that it doesn't clog so often.
    • Put your turbine underground so that you're piping the water across, not up. Or, if it's nice and waterproof, attach it straight onto the narrow end of the funnel.
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  13. Not feasible. by /dev/trash · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The money you would spend in getting Federal, State, and local permits would offset any savings you would incur from being off grid.

    Since you said you are in the middle of nowhere I'll assume you are closer to NY than MD. Not that it matters, I'm just trying to think of a place that is in the middle of nowhere on the Susquehanna.

  14. All that glitters is not gold ... by johnjaydk · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Well I've spent some time playing this field professionaly. Hydro electric power can come from two types of energy kinetic (ie. high speed flow) and kinetic (ie. hight difference).

    The conventional wisdom is that unless you harness a shitload of water (big construction here) and get houndreds of cubic meters per second then the kinetic energy is essentially worthless.

    Commercial powerplants use the potential energy and since you live between to powerplant then smart money says they squezed all the juice out where you live. Lots of flow, zero energy.

    Try playing with solar power instead...

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    TCAP-Abort
  15. What about fuel cell? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Buy one of these power plants from UTC and sell off power to your neighbors...

    http://www.utcfuelcells.com/commercial/index.sht m

    Be a self sustaining community and stick it to the bastards in Big Energy.

  16. Re:High torque by Chagrin · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Any sort of gearing or belt system robs power from your generator. Direct-drive whenever possible.

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    I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation

  17. Re:User/pass for Home Power's site (no!) by barc0001 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do not use that username/password.

    Home Power is a very small grassroot-ish site. I've been dowloading their current issue for a couple of years now. A few months back they stopped just having a link to the issue on the front page and went to registration. The reason they need the registration is to prove how many unique visitors download and read the mag for their advertising rates on ads inside the magazine. If they can't prove their readership size, their ad rates fall. And they're not some big megacorp, they're already on a shoe-string budget. If you want to read it, sign up. They've never abused my info, and the magazine is awesome for the depth of info provided.

  18. Middle Ages by ChrisMaple · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Dark Ages: ~476 C.E. to ~ 1000 C.E.

    Middle Ages: ~500 C.E. to ~1500 C.E.

    Renaissance: mid 1300's C.E. to mid 1700's C.E.

    The Dark Ages are rightly named. The late Middle Ages is when civilization reversed its deteriorating trend.

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  19. Re:here is the link by dexter+riley · · Score: 2, Insightful

    From the site:
    In a 9 mph stream (slow jog) the Jack Rabbit produces about 2,400 watt-hours daily

    So, at 2.4 kilowatt-hours a day, at a cost of $0.08 (say) a kilowatt-hour, you would save over 19 cents a day on electricity, or enough to pay off the generator in 17.1 years.

    You're probably better off sinking the money into more efficient light bulbs or refrigerators.