QUESTION Turbulent Hydro - Could this be the future of renewable energy?
The modern day water wheel?
7
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Fine until some silly bastard drops a brick in it or a big branch floats down and locks it up.
FrayedBear
Level 9
Feb 10, 2018
1
Nice for homes near year round streams. ...Portugal makes zero impact on the environment with miles of offshore wave riding tumblers providing 13% of the nation's electricity and could power most of USA atop rivers and waves
GreenAtheist
Level 8
Feb 10, 2018
2
Small scale hydro should be a viable proposition in some areas, especially as a supplement to other renewables.
Here in the UK we don't get reliable amounts of sun, so solar is less efficient here than elsewhere. Offshore wind power is now significantly cheaper to produce than coal/gas or nuclear now in the UK even without any subsidies.
What we do have plenty of is water - not enough for huge hydro installations, but we have plenty of rivers that could be effectively utilised if there was the will. We have such a set up close to where I live which uses a different set up, using a screw type turbine.
[watermillholidays.co.uk]
Uncorrugated
Level 7
Feb 10, 2018
3
Looks like you would still need alternative power sources for when the stream/river froze over, or got too low. Very clever method. I saw, sometime ago, something similar but on a much smaller scale, and portable. You could quickly set it up in a flow and produce a small electrical current to recharge batteries, for instance.
Condor5
Level 8
Feb 10, 2018
3
That would be convenient for camping if the device was small enough to cart around.
This particular technology has actually been in use, in some form or another, for centuries, at least, and most recently as a water wheel in mills.
This will only succeed if a handful of obscenely rich people can monopolize it and charge ludicrous rates for its use.
Hicks66
Level 7
Feb 10, 2018
1
There is not a great deal of technology needed in building a sluice to provide the necessary poer to turn a generator. India turns them out by the thousand - millions if you pay for them.
That’s a new application of very old technology, but interesting.
Gatovicolo
Level 8
Feb 10, 2018
3
I am astonished. First, I like the idea. I really do. I liked it way back in 1972 when historians explained to me how my mill had been built in 1844 with a low-head horizontal turbine water wheel that powered the flour boys, mill wheels, and probably aided the lifting hoists. They further explained that the remarkable part to them was that this was brand new, front-line British technology and not legally shipped from England until the late 1840s.
Dick_Martin
Level 7
Feb 10, 2018
6
Wow!
Flour boys? I won't even try to guess...
@Condor5, oh. flour, when first milled, is damp and will clump and rot if not dried immediately. The way to dry it is to throw it in the air and let it air-dry as it drops back to the flour room floor. The flour boys of that day were wooden shafts with paddles that would spin and swirls the air, lifting the flour and drying it, They were so-named because before that, slave boys were sent into the room with shovels and they threw the flour into the air, It was a death sentence but boys were cheap.
@Dick_Martin why, thank you for the explanation. I've got my learning for the day. Much appreciated. BTW, is that clumping and rotting of the flour one way ergot (from whence cometh LSD) developed?
@Condor5 Gosh I have no idea. I spent all of my knowledge about milling in that single post. 
@Dick_Martin And a spark in that dust can create quite an explosion.
@Condor5 I also vaguely remember a case of mass poisoning by a baker in France? who had one bag of flour contaminated in the back of his van. As I recall a lot of people died.
@FrayedBear I remember hearing something similar, can't verify the authenticity, but it was presented as a documented event.
@Condor5 I think I read it in something like a Readers Digest book of greatest real life detection stories ... it could have been 30+ years ago. The contaminant was from something else that seeped through the hessian bag.
The still pic I get looks cool, but it won't animate?
AnneWimsey
Level 9
Feb 10, 2018
2
Sorry, I took it off FB, so sometimes people will have trouble viewing. If you really want to hear about it, then google it and it should come up in a format you can view. Maybe I should have done that to begin with. Duh!
Only in areas where there is adequate and continuous water flow. Our farm in Oregon was powered by a stream that ran through our property. Where I live now, solar, wind, and nuclear would be the only reasonable options. For local power at our home it would have to be a combination of solar and wind. The nearest running water is miles from here and season dependent.
evidentialist
Level 8
Feb 10, 2018
3
Lol. Well at least you wouldn't spread the contamination as effectively as Fukushima is!
Fukushima Radiation Mapping In The Pacific Could Bolster Climate Science . News | OPB [opb.org]
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