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Hydroelectric Bucket Will Gladly Help You Miss the Point of Camping
Posted by Gizmodo US Edition at 9:45 AM on June 28, 2008
Sam Redfield of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group has designed a bucket-based hydroelectric generator that can be made with easily obtainable, affordable parts. The "pico generator" is intended to provide a modest power supply suitable for home lighting and small appliances to remote destinations. They've already tested the bucket at La Florida in Guatemala, where it demonstrated the ability to power five retro Motorola handsets from hustle'n flow of a small stream.
A modified old car alternator carries out the power generation duties, and the rest of the assembly is made of readily available materials. A small pipe diverts water to a storage tank, from which it is gravity-fed into the bucket. The design also has a minimal environmental and human impact, as it doesn't require damming and feeds the water back into the same stream just a few feet away. [AIDG via Make]
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
lutton
Posted 1:05 PM 28/6/08
>>Good as long as you have a decent drop.
That's probably the reason for the intermediate storage tank--
>> A small pipe diverts water to a storage tank, from which it is gravity-fed into the bucket.
lutton
thebear91
Posted 12:19 PM 28/6/08
Good as long as you have a decent drop.
There is a calculation for how far the water must drop and how much flow is necessary to create X amount of horsepower, which can than be converted to electricity.
thebear91
Valicious
Posted 11:58 AM 28/6/08
@Stem_Sell: you're going by the bucket?
get kicks from it.
Valicious
Valicious
Posted 11:56 AM 28/6/08
In eastern Siberia, the shaman would consume the mushrooms, and others would drink his urine. This urine, still containing active hallucinogens may actually be more potent than the A. muscaria mushrooms with fewer negative effects.
re-recycleroo.
Valicious
Stem_Sell
Posted 11:55 AM 28/6/08
This one definitely goes on my bucket list...
Stem_Sell
Xenobiologista
Posted 1:31 PM 28/6/08
This would be really nice for scientists. I went on a trip with a professor studying bat ecology once. She was using an ultrasonic mic hooked up to her Toughbook to reocrd their calls and we'd have to hike half an hour down to the village to charge it.
Xenobiologista
GiltProto
Posted 1:15 PM 28/6/08
You can get over a thousand watts with a more "professional" generator and enough feet of drop with sufficient gallons per minute flow. Here's a generator and chart that might help you if you have at least 25 feet of drop.
[www.realgoods.com]
Of course you'll need to spend about $2000 bucks for this. The homebrew solution is probably better for smaller scale generation.
GiltProto
Z4N5H1N
Posted 3:41 PM 28/6/08
@Stem_Sell: Groooooooaaaaan.
Z4N5H1N
weatherman
Posted 7:37 PM 28/6/08
@GiltProto: yes, but to get over a thousand watts you need to have 200 ft. drop - Niagara Falls isn't even 200ft! Ok, granted Niagara isn't know for being particularly tall, and according to the chart you pointed out 100 ft with the proper flow will also get 1kw, but still not many folks live next to that kind of drop. For those that do, I'm sure that it's a great option.
weatherman
c2
Posted 12:21 AM 29/6/08
Reminds me of Gilligan's Island, they would have used coconuts though. How many of these do I need to power my laptop and sat phone for my internet connection when I'm in the bush?
c2
Elliuotatar
Posted 12:58 AM 29/6/08
@weatherman:
Damn, you're right, Niagara isn't that big at all... I always thought it was 5x that size.
Curse you, bugs bunny cartoons!
Elliuotatar
afuller
Posted 9:03 PM 28/6/08
There is a simple equation for power from anything changing elevation. Power is a way of saying a time-rate of energy, just like a velocity is a time-rate of distance.
Anything with mass has an energy due to its elevation from some reference (say sea level). Water changing elevation represents a flow of energy. I'll spare you the derivation (it's in any decent fluid mechanics textbook). The power present for a drop of water is
P = density*gravity*flowrate*elevation(*efficiency)
P is power in watts
the inputs are:
density of water, 1000 kilogram/meter^3
acceleration due to gravity, 9.8 meter/second^2
flowrate through the machine, meter^3/second
elevation drop across the machine, in meters
this P is the *maximum available* power. any machine used to do anything with that potential will inevitably extract less than that potential, wasting some power in the process, so efficiency is the fraction of this available power that the machine converts to useful power. this efficiency term is actually several distinct efficiencies rolled into one. mainly we're talking about the hydraulic efficiency of the spinning element, the runner/propeller, changing the angular momentum of the flow. that's where all the power comes from. the incoming flow is typically made to spin by guide vanes (or the arrangement of jets, as in this turgo wheel design) and then the rotation is removed by something mounted on a shaft. changing the angular momentum of the flow exerts a torque on the rotating shaft. if you know physics, or cars, or have common sense, then you realize that torque on a rotating shaft = power.
if you're generating electricity, it includes the efficiency of the generator/alternator (probably ~80% for a machine this size). for small machines like this, water-to-wire efficiency would optimistically be 50%, or 0.50 in the equation above. massive multi-MW-scale machines might have a water-to-wire efficiency of 90%, because they are carefully custom designed for a given site and the operating conditions are carefully monitored.
have fun with the equation!
afuller
ninjagin
Posted 8:06 AM 29/6/08
Microhydro is pretty neat stuff. There are a few mountain houses in the hills that use it. It's kinda fringe technology, but it does work. Seems to be best when it's scaled well.
ninjagin