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Diversion Hydropower

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- Mon, 18 Jan 2021 20:56:05 EST cuBTyRdx No.79989
File: 1611021365942.gif -(48731B / 47.59KB, 604x454) Thumbnail displayed, click image for full size. Diversion Hydropower
Someone tell me why we don't just build canals and use diversion hydro for the majority of residential capacity needs?

Planning to build a DIY diversion hydro setup at a property in the North West U.S. soon to offset energy costs from owning an EV (small creek runs through the property).

Also fun fact... 96% of all battery storage in the U.S. comes from pumped storage. "Green" energy folks saying acid/lithium battery storage for solar/wind is somehow renewable blow my mind.
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Martin Fapperkack - Sun, 07 Mar 2021 17:22:08 EST P8nk7/Yg No.80001 Reply
>>79989
>"Green" energy folks saying acid/lithium battery storage for solar/wind is somehow renewable blow my mind.
A residential lithium battery pack (llike tesla's) is about 10kwh.

Now imagine a 200 liter (50 gallon) drum of water on a second floor. Actually, imagine TWO 200 liter drums of water on a third floor (30 feet/10 meters). You can calculate the joules by multiplying the mass (400kg) by the constant g (9.8m/s^2) by the height (10m). That gives you 39200 J.

Call it 40kJ. Divide by 3600 to get Kwh = 0.01Kwh. So for 100 gallons of water 30 feet in the air, you get less than 1/100 of the energy in a residential lithium backup system. It's about the same storage as a cell phone battery.

Pumped storage really only makes sense at landscape scales.
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Edwin Bannernick - Sun, 11 Apr 2021 13:06:08 EST yRn5sLX5 No.80016 Reply
>>79989
even if it were at all viable for decent residential power generation, muh ecology
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Sidney Lightbury - Fri, 23 Apr 2021 17:56:35 EST sT/GRpvz No.80028 Reply
>>79989
It's definitely viable, but you have to have some serious flow and pressure to get a lot out of it. Real hydro projects involve gigantic dams and batteries of industrial-sized turbines. I'm really not sure how much you could expect to get out of using a backyard stream or positive-pressure stream, but if you can set something up at low cost then it's never a bad thing to have a little extra trickle of private electricity generation, just like if you were to chuck some solar panels on your roof to help some redundancy, or make hot water.

One of the things that gets expensive is adequate switchgear to be able to operate off of the grid entirely vs. just being able to reduce grid draw when the grid is up. Be sure to factor that in to your planning.

Another way to go if you're considering a stationary installation is nickle-iron batteries. These are old, heavy, and you have to do some work to source them in bulk, but they're frequently a great capacity per dollar if you can swing or split a bulk order, and they pretty much last forever and never take any damage from being deep cycled all the time. I'm not sure how it compares to setting up your own personal pumped storage system (which of course doubles as a way to have water pressure without a well and an electric pump) but it'd be something to look in to. As far as I know, nickel-iron batteries aren't in mass manufacture anymore, so you'd be looking at buying used and sucking up the transportation costs - they're very heavy.
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Rebecca Dobberham - Mon, 26 Apr 2021 19:16:29 EST Nnu4HuW+ No.80029 Reply
>Someone tell me why we don't just build canals and use diversion hydro for the majority of residential capacity needs?

I mean, we use hydroelectric for huge swathes of residential power needs. Some of that is through diversion and some of it isn't. In the United States, much of that is already tapped out. My region is filled with rivers and there's every conceivable form of hydroelectric station siphoning off as much as they can (your stream is likely not going to power much more than your lights, but you likely already knew that). From an ecological standpoint, hydroelectricity is not truly green. Huge concrete dams and sluices with constant water flow releases carbon dioxide through the breakdown of the calcium carbonate which makes up the bulk of the concrete we use to make these dams in the first place. Furthermore, damming up tributaries leads to a decline in downstream wetland ecology and alterations in upstream wetland ecology that reduce the capacity of these regions to serve as carbon sinks. Wetlands are very powerful carbon sinks as they naturally occur, so this damage adds up when you consider how much hydroelectricity is utilized.

Then, hydroelectric shares the same issue as nuclear power in the sense that startup costs are high (if you're planning on generating real power and not just hooking up some batteries to your yard) and have to be subsidized by the state, many locations aren't suitable for damming, many downstream locations in areas that could be suitable for damming are major residential or metropolitan areas which means damming such regions is a nonstarter (are you willing to pay the billions in eminent domain?), and the laws that govern energy transportation mean it's not a simple matter to simply transport energy from riverine regions to areas that lack major damable rivers (unless you ate the schizopill and think the Wardenclyffe Tower was the greatest tragedy to humankind).
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Thramby Cumberpatch - Thu, 06 May 2021 03:44:37 EST 7bi87AzV No.80035 Reply
>>80016
it would be better for fish than big dams
letting the rivers run free will save the planet
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Water Boi - Mon, 12 Jul 2021 10:59:00 EST Iul1K4iz No.80048 Reply
>>80001
Martin, this is a really fantastic explanation to argue against pumped storage solutions at a microgrid level.

A modern waterwheel can generate 2500-5000w depending on stream speed, and stream speed can be pretty easily created / maintained. YouTube diversion microgrid setups.

Without wanting to dmg the environment too heavily, would love to see sloped canals going inland from an ocean. Designated siphoning zones could divert the hydro towards a residential area.

Essentially controlled flooding a few hundred miles inland.
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Phyllis Suddlenuck - Fri, 03 Sep 2021 13:37:50 EST XjrKlvdV No.80056 Reply
It messes up the fish.
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Water boi - Sun, 21 Nov 2021 12:57:31 EST NKGNlfnm No.80095 Reply
>>80029

Agreed on all points. However... engineering a diversion setup can be as simple as creating a 10-15 foot drop along a stream with some pvc pipe and a small Turbine.. the drop would create the necessary amount of water speed to power a residential home.

Look at Amsterdam for notes on creating artificial waterways that do not impact the local wildlife. Designing/Creating a new river system from the Atlantic to the Pacific that crosses throughout the United States (not using concrete) would be amazing. We all love water.
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