Power from the Creek?

After first considering solar, I was sitting by the creek and wondered if it could be put to use. A bit of research told me that a microhydro generators supply way more power than typical solar systems. This is because, unlike solar, the power is not limited to a few hours each day. The watts really add up over the course of 24 hours. A typical day of sun up north can provide four hours of energy, give or take an hour for season. Let's say we have a 100 watt panel. Four hours is 400 watts produced that day. That goes to recharging the batteries we rely on at night. A generator on par with the alternator I'm using for my wind turbine can easily put out 50watts. Even at only half the watts of a solar panel, its over 24hrs. Thats 1200 watts. Three times the energy!

The problem with my creek is that it lacks the ingredients needed for a good hydro system. There are two ways to make good power in a river. One, by the amount of drop. That is to say, if you can get water to drop through a pipe onto a wheel with enough force, that's really good. Typically 5ft. I have nearly no drop at all. That's really bad. Second, without drop, we can make up for it by using a different turbine built more for high flow. Here, we'd have no drop, but the water would be moving through the wheel quickly and in large quantity. That would be really good. My creek has a great amount of flow, but it's spread over it's 85ft width and is quite shallow. Three feet per second. That's really bad. Anyway, to the first video.

In this first video, I tied a string to a small plastic bag you might get from a card shop. The string was tied to a scale used for measuring not weight, but pull. I thought one way of getting a sense for the force of the water would be to imagine the bag's area as similar to the area of a few cups on a water wheel. When put in the right spot, and the bag didn't flop around like a dying fish, it looked promising.



Ok, I don't have much drop. But maybe all is not lost. We could have taken advantage of the fact that there is indeed some drop over 3000ft of river and that my creek wraps around my property like a big "U". No need for 3000ft of pipe. Just cross the top of the U with some pipe, right? From one end of my property down to the other. But alas, my riverbanks are at least 10feet over the creek and the pipe would need to go at least 40ft upland before going down the other side. Not good at all.

So you might say, "dam the creek and channel all the water, you'll have high flow". Indeed. But a dam is something that will need permits from the town, county, state, feds, DEC, and possibly even the Army Corps of Engineers. This is a protected water stocked each year with thousands of trout. 

I know the momentum of moving water is great. Maybe the force pushing into a large diameter pipe and reduced down to a smaller diameter can lead to either faster flow out the other end, or at least to generate a few inches of height. That's what I did in this next video. Not exactly a success by any measure.



I've not given up entirely. After a number of novel experiments, I still believe a floating wheel with large paddles could make some power. Something small and unnoticable in this large woods. Nothing obnoxious that would bring undue attention, harm fish, or spoil the view. After standing in the water with a scale used to weigh fish, i attached a bag and let it float into a riffle. I got a good 5lbs of pull on it. If I threw a number of large stones over time, I could build up a very natural looking dam in at least a small section of the river. A deep area of high flow would be the result and would also look altogether natural. In it, I'd put the wheel.

In this next video I'm trying to use a garden hose to check as level of sorts. The mouth of the hose is at the very top of the water upstream. As water came out the other end, I was going to lift it until it stopped. This would be approximately the height of the mouth. This was a flop, either due to air in the hose, friction, or something I'm not thinking of. At least Lowe's took all my stuff back without question.



Stay tuned on this one. Once the cabin gets underway and I have someplace to store all the junk I'd be experimenting with, I might get something together that puts out at least some amount of energy. Look at the power in the swollen creek below. If channeled even slightly, the force could provide at least some easy power. If all else fails, my creek still has the power to calm me, call me back to her, and mesmerize me. Now that's real power.