General > General Technical Chat
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:
--- Quote from: tom66 on December 31, 2023, 01:23:53 pm ---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.
--- End quote ---
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.
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