Why don't we make [more] use of water wheels?

[mendip_discovery]

Back in the day the UK we had thousands of water wheels that were used in industry. Why can't we do somthing similar to the small wind farms and use small hydro generation.

[tom66]

A friend of mine lives in a new-build estate that has a water wheel along a major river.  The water wheel generates a peak of 200kW.  The idea was it would cover the average energy usage of the 200 or so homes built near it.  The reality is the council spends more money maintaining it than it generates in electricity and it is only retained because the government grant that paid to install it has some mandatory maintenance period, but it'll probably be switched off in the next decade or so.

[tggzzz]

A1: scalability and dispatchability
A2: we do, e.g. https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/microhydropower-systems

[nctnico]

A friend of mine lives in a new-build estate that has a water wheel along a major river.  The water wheel generates a peak of 200kW.  The idea was it would cover the average energy usage of the 200 or so homes built near it.  The reality is the council spends more money maintaining it than it generates in electricity and it is only retained because the government grant that paid to install it has some mandatory maintenance period, but it'll probably be switched off in the next decade or so.

I wonder if this is a typical case where government awarded construction to the cheapest bidder instead of the most competent one... In the end there is no technical reason a waterwheel wouldn't work as these where already in use by the Romans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierapolis_sawmill

[NiHaoMike]

It's more economical to build a few big dams than lots of small water wheels. But it's possible the water wheels would make a comeback where the disadvantages of a dam are problematic.

[pcprogrammer]

Well maybe the solution can be found here. 

[mendip_discovery]

We put solar panels on the roofs of houses and feed that small amount back to the grid. I dont think it needs to be hyper efficient.

There are a few places near me that were old mills and a old large water wheel and it would be interesting to see the effects of a generator on that. At least it mixes in with a rual location rather than some of wind turbines or solar farms we get these days.

[mendip_discovery]

Well maybe the solution can be found here. 

I am going to get my mate Farringdon onto the project ASAP and see what he comes up with.

[janoc]

We put solar panels on the roofs of houses and feed that small amount back to the grid. I dont think it needs to be hyper efficient.

It is not only matter of efficiency but maintenance costs. Solar panels costs almost nothing to maintain once installed. Water wheel (or any sort of moving machinery) not so much.

It needs to regularly inspected, cleaned, greased, seals replaced, painted, ... then you have the entire channel bringing water to and from the wheel that must be maintained, there is a risk of flood damaging the installation, etc etc. All that is specialized work that requires money, permits and people to regularly perform.

[langwadt]

Well maybe the solution can be found here. 

I am going to get my mate Farringdon onto the project ASAP and see what he comes up with.

have a consultant work on the design on a laptop in a coffeeshop in between replacing headlights, while arguing that the government should pay for it?

[Andy Chee]

I don't know any off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure there are calculators for waterwheel energy capacity (flow rate, head, etc).

If I had a running stream on my property, I'd definitely investigate the possibility of extracting energy out of it.  Even a 2kW waterwheel would exceed the average 24hr energy production from an average solar panel installation.

[langwadt]

We put solar panels on the roofs of houses and feed that small amount back to the grid. I dont think it needs to be hyper efficient.

It is not only matter of efficiency but maintenance costs. Solar panels costs almost nothing to maintain once installed. Water wheel (or any sort of moving machinery) not so much.

It needs to regularly inspected, cleaned, greased, seals replaced, painted, ... then you have the entire channel bringing water to and from the wheel that must be maintained, there is a risk of flood damaging the installation, etc etc. All that is specialized work that requires money, permits and people to regularly perform.

and messing with the flow of water ways are likely going to have quite a bit of red tape

[AVGresponding]

We put solar panels on the roofs of houses and feed that small amount back to the grid. I dont think it needs to be hyper efficient.

It is not only matter of efficiency but maintenance costs. Solar panels costs almost nothing to maintain once installed. Water wheel (or any sort of moving machinery) not so much.

It needs to regularly inspected, cleaned, greased, seals replaced, painted, ... then you have the entire channel bringing water to and from the wheel that must be maintained, there is a risk of flood damaging the installation, etc etc. All that is specialized work that requires money, permits and people to regularly perform.

and messing with the flow of water ways are likely going to have quite a bit of red tape

You need an abstraction license in the UK if you intend to generate useful amounts of power. I expect there are similar requirements in other countries.

[mendip_discovery]

and messing with the flow of water ways are likely going to have quite a bit of red tape

You need an abstraction license in the UK if you intend to generate useful amounts of power. I expect there are similar requirements in other countries.

Lol, I love how an organisation that does very little to maintain the waterways loves to charge people to fish in them, if they want to fill a pond or even use it to generate electricity. But happily let the sewage be pumped in to rivers. Maybe if we put the generators onto the sewage outlets it would be cheaper.

I only started this thread as I see many talking about wind turbines, solar panels and even solar fricking roadways but not much about small form hydro.

[langwadt]

We put solar panels on the roofs of houses and feed that small amount back to the grid. I dont think it needs to be hyper efficient.

It is not only matter of efficiency but maintenance costs. Solar panels costs almost nothing to maintain once installed. Water wheel (or any sort of moving machinery) not so much.

It needs to regularly inspected, cleaned, greased, seals replaced, painted, ... then you have the entire channel bringing water to and from the wheel that must be maintained, there is a risk of flood damaging the installation, etc etc. All that is specialized work that requires money, permits and people to regularly perform.

and messing with the flow of water ways are likely going to have quite a bit of red tape

You need an abstraction license in the UK if you intend to generate useful amounts of power. I expect there are similar requirements in other countries.

and you'd probably have to show what effect is has on other properties and fish upstream and downstream

[mendip_discovery]

We put solar panels on the roofs of houses and feed that small amount back to the grid. I dont think it needs to be hyper efficient.

It is not only matter of efficiency but maintenance costs. Solar panels costs almost nothing to maintain once installed. Water wheel (or any sort of moving machinery) not so much.

It needs to regularly inspected, cleaned, greased, seals replaced, painted, ... then you have the entire channel bringing water to and from the wheel that must be maintained, there is a risk of flood damaging the installation, etc etc. All that is specialized work that requires money, permits and people to regularly perform.

and messing with the flow of water ways are likely going to have quite a bit of red tape

You need an abstraction license in the UK if you intend to generate useful amounts of power. I expect there are similar requirements in other countries.

and you'd probably have to show what effect is has on other properties and fish upstream and downstream

They were all excited for tidal energy. There is place in Scotland that has a rather large one that does quite well but I wouldn't want to be in the water anywhere near it. I suspect it will devastate the fish but as with these things the bad news is kept out of the comments.

[tggzzz]

Well maybe the solution can be found here. 

I am going to get my mate Farringdon onto the project ASAP and see what he comes up with.

You're safe. Faringdon is too busy giving his expertise to a Major Electronics Engineering Professor...

I have recently been approached by a Major Electronics Engineering Professor in a UK university. He is thinking of commencing a new Electronics Engineering degree course in UK. It is designed to cater for the reality that the UK Electronics Engineering sector is dominated by companies who import Electronics from China.
The course is designed to assist these companies in their efforts.

[coppice]

A friend of mine lives in a new-build estate that has a water wheel along a major river.  The water wheel generates a peak of 200kW.  The idea was it would cover the average energy usage of the 200 or so homes built near it.  The reality is the council spends more money maintaining it than it generates in electricity and it is only retained because the government grant that paid to install it has some mandatory maintenance period, but it'll probably be switched off in the next decade or so.

This same issue is faced by windmills, and solar panels, and will be faced by SMRs if they really make it to market. The cost of maintaining a few big systems almost always works out wayyyyyy cheaper than maintaining a lot of small ones.

If I lived in some hilly places with a good flowing stream cascading down all year, I would construct my own private mini-hydropower system. However, it would be more for fun, and the satisfaction of a greater sense of independence, than to save on energy costs.

[coppice]

They were all excited for tidal energy. There is place in Scotland that has a rather large one that does quite well but I wouldn't want to be in the water anywhere near it. I suspect it will devastate the fish but as with these things the bad news is kept out of the comments.

Tidal power in inherently niche. Its possibly worth doing in a few select places, but it doesn't scale. Most of the world has only a small tidal range. If you live in a few places, like the UK and the surrounding countries, the continental shelf concentrates the water and you see tides big enough to do some decent generation. No continental shelf, no big tides. Most of the world would require vast areas of infrastructure to generate useful amounts of power from the tides.

[tggzzz]

We put solar panels on the roofs of houses and feed that small amount back to the grid. I dont think it needs to be hyper efficient.

There are a few places near me that were old mills and a old large water wheel and it would be interesting to see the effects of a generator on that. At least it mixes in with a rual location rather than some of wind turbines or solar farms we get these days.

There is some validity to that, but for the absolute UK scale, see https://withouthotair.com/c8/page_55.shtml (BTW, that book should be the starting point for all discussions of energy in the UK )

40 years ago I was at a museum of rural life in Vik, Iceland. I was talking to the person who had collected all the artefacts ranging from penis fetishes to pelton wheels. I have mercifully forgotten about the former, but the latter is relevant.

40 years before that a farmer had heard about the newfangled electricity, and wanted to try it. The only practical was was to build his own turbine, based around a 10cm(?) pelton wheel that he cast himself. The water came through a pipe of similar diameter, from somewhere up a hill.

As for the legality in the UK, I have no idea - but ISTR it being seriously considered a couple of decades ago.

[tggzzz]

They were all excited for tidal energy. There is place in Scotland that has a rather large one that does quite well but I wouldn't want to be in the water anywhere near it. I suspect it will devastate the fish but as with these things the bad news is kept out of the comments.

Tidal power in inherently niche. Its possibly worth doing in a few select places, but it doesn't scale. Most of the world has only a small tidal range. If you live in a few places, like the UK and the surrounding countries, the continental shelf concentrates the water and you see tides big enough to do some decent generation. No continental shelf, no big tides. Most of the world would require vast areas of infrastructure to generate useful amounts of power from the tides.

Not entirely true. See https://withouthotair.com/c14/page_81.shtml and pages following.

[Hydro]

We put solar panels on the roofs of houses and feed that small amount back to the grid. I dont think it needs to be hyper efficient.

It is not only matter of efficiency but maintenance costs. Solar panels costs almost nothing to maintain once installed. Water wheel (or any sort of moving machinery) not so much.

It needs to regularly inspected, cleaned, greased, seals replaced, painted, ... then you have the entire channel bringing water to and from the wheel that must be maintained, there is a risk of flood damaging the installation, etc etc. All that is specialized work that requires money, permits and people to regularly perform.

There is an argument against this

- it does not depend on weather conditions or time of the day and can work 24/7, all year round.

Compared to solar power stations , hydraulic turbines also have additional environmental advantages, as they do not have "consumable" components, such as batteries and solar panels, which are the main equipment in solar power stations. They have a limited service life due to degradation of these components over time. And their production and utilization is not environmentally-friendly.

   Hydropower units, on the other hand, can operate for decades without the need to replace the main equipment.

[coromonadalix]

anything who as mechanics in it may or will fail  by the way

anything put into water suffer more corrosion than normal,  over the ground equipement or even wind turbines

all of this require maintenances and checkups, THEY CAN NOT BE LEFT UNNATENDED

a25$ dollar part may fail an entire system of many $  just because it was not verified at regular intervals

[Hydro]

Back in the day the UK we had thousands of water wheels that were used in industry. Why can't we do somthing similar to the small wind farms and use small hydro generation.

Application options

https://waterotor.com/technology/
https://emrgy.com/
https://aqysta.com/our-story/

[coppice]

They were all excited for tidal energy. There is place in Scotland that has a rather large one that does quite well but I wouldn't want to be in the water anywhere near it. I suspect it will devastate the fish but as with these things the bad news is kept out of the comments.

Tidal power in inherently niche. Its possibly worth doing in a few select places, but it doesn't scale. Most of the world has only a small tidal range. If you live in a few places, like the UK and the surrounding countries, the continental shelf concentrates the water and you see tides big enough to do some decent generation. No continental shelf, no big tides. Most of the world would require vast areas of infrastructure to generate useful amounts of power from the tides.

Not entirely true. See https://withouthotair.com/c14/page_81.shtml and pages following.

Where does MacKay differ from what I said? It was reading Without The Hot Air that first made me realise just how niche tidal power will always be. Before that I realised that Britain and France had taken the most interest in it, because of the continental shelf, but I didn't realise just how unusual that is. After reading MacKay and looking at some maps it became clear. If you live on the coast where there is no continental shelf, things like the tide going in and out on beaches is quite a weak effect.