Articles · Topic
Articles about Micro Hydro
11 articles across 1 section
Section
Self-Reliance
Choosing a Turbine
Head and flow narrow the choice before preference enters into it. Impulse against reaction machines, the application domain chart that sorts Pelton, Turgo, cross-flow and propeller turbines by site, why part-flow performance matters more than peak efficiency, and the case for running a pump backward.
Controlling a Hydro System
A hydro turbine cannot be unplugged. Remove the electrical load and it runs away within seconds; close the valve quickly and water hammer can turn 26 psi into 94. How diversion loads resolve both by never interrupting anything, and a precise account of what the electrical code does and does not say about redundant control.
Generating Your Own Power
Track 3 of the Energy domain. Continuous power generation at property scale across six areas: solar, micro-hydro, wind, biomass and heat conversion, continuous-duty engines, and site-specific sources. Written for a property that intends to produce its own electricity as normal operation rather than for a household sizing backup.
Intake, Penstock and Winter
Where the head you measured either survives or does not. Self-cleaning Coanda screens, the four jobs an intake performs, and pipe sizing worked at four diameters on one site, where a single size increase is worth 38 percent more power. Plus what actually freezes in a hydro system, which is less than most people expect.
Is Your Water Worth It: Measuring Head and Flow
The two measurements that decide whether a stream is worth developing, taken with a garden hose, a pressure gauge and a tape measure. Head by pressure at 2.31 feet per psi, flow by bucket, float-area or weir, with the surface velocity correction most homeowner guides omit. Worked end to end on one creek.
Micro-Hydro and Water Power
The Hydro track of the property-scale Generation section. Eight guides on generating power from moving water, which unlike solar and wind runs continuously. Measuring head and flow, the three system configurations, turbine selection, civil works, load control, and the water rights and permits that decide whether any of it is lawful.
Run-of-River Micro-Hydro
The standard micro-hydro configuration: divert part of a stream, run it down a pipe to a turbine, return it immediately. The eight-component chain from intake to transmission, why the penstock rather than the turbine is most of the project, what constant output feels like to live with, and the six sites where it is the wrong answer.
Small Impoundments and Micro-Dams
What storing water behind a small dam offers a micro-hydro system, and what it demands in engineering, permitting and permanent liability. The three failure modes and their national statistics, why hazard classification describes consequences rather than condition, and why this guide stops short of build instructions.
Water Rights and Permits
Three separate bodies of law govern a micro-hydro project: the state right to use the water, federal energy jurisdiction under the Federal Power Act, and Clean Water Act permitting. Federal jurisdiction turns on where a project sits rather than how large it is, and there is a formal process for finding out where you stand.
Waterwheels
Overshot, breastshot and undershot wheels reach 75 to 85 percent hydraulic efficiency, better than their reputation and traceable to a mathematically incorrect 1704 analysis. The real drawback is rotational speed. Where a wheel beats a turbine, and why direct mechanical work suits it better than generating electricity.
When Household Solar Stops Being Enough
How to tell whether a household has genuinely outgrown its solar system, the cheaper corrections worth trying first, and what property-scale generation actually asks in money, space and maintenance. Includes the case for staying where you are.