Cheap Low head Hydro

[DavB275]

The item in the OP looks a bit like my home made creation I experimented with a while ago.

[nowty]

The item in the OP looks a bit like my home made creation I experimented with a while ago.

@DavB275, what annual yield you get on your 2kW wind turbine ?

[Oldgreybeard]

A community energy project not far from us tried very hard to get a low head hydro system installed on a local river, using an old mill leat. Sadly I think they've given up now, as the opposition from the fly fishing crowd was just too well organised. The river is a popular trout stream, and one of its tributaries runs alongside our garden. We know that it's got a lot of fish, as we've had otters come into our garden a few times, so the trout are presumably going a long way upstream. The community energy project seems to now be concentrating on solar, together with the electric car hire scheme they've been running for a while now. The latter is brilliant, anyone can hire "Sparky" for a very reasonable price, and they make sure the car is fully charged when collected and recharge it on return. "Sparky" has got at least one person we know to shift to an EV, after they hired the car a few times. They charge £30.03 per 24 hour period, including charging, which is pretty cheap IMHO, or you can hire the car for £5.50 for one hour, with the next three hours charged at £1.83/hour.

[DavB275]

@nowty Regret I don't have any way of measuring/recording data from the turbine. All I can say is with a steady 20-30mph wind it does slow down the rate of discharge of the batteries significantly. The few occasions we have had very windy nights (40mph +), it will keep them fully charged. Sorry I can't be more scientific than this.

[GarethC]

This is my friend's startup. Still early days.

https://kinetic-hydro.com/