500 Watt Hydro Power System in Virginia (Overview)

[Applause] we've got a high water situation our Creek is running three or four inches above normal a little bit turbid but we're here's sandbags and rocks that that controls our volume for our six-inch intake line right here I've got a little two-inch thing wobbling on a on a half-inch rod that is the main intake the water flows from here down to an elbow down here here we've got to clean out gravel trap in the bottom which goes out the bottom and we got our elbow in our six-inch line that goes then to the the intake screen so our little further down here we have our spinner screen which is running at capacity the debris flows across the spreader it's distributed evenly in the top of the spinner screen the spinner screen is on bearings I've got golf ball bearings at this end and a pin in the end the other end I can stop and you can maybe see the holes in the top of the six-inch pipe those are inch and a half holes all across there the water flows through the screen in the eight inch pipe we have overflow here okay shut off the water at the creek intake to show you how the spinner works well we have on the end well let me take it apart for you we have just a boat we have a bolt in and a set screw and the at that end we have our bearings our ball bearing your golf ball bearings this is nothing but a screen where the squirrel cage blowing up by heating unit an air conditioning unit it should you should make some effort to keep it round for stability I plugged the end of the pipe with a piece of PVC trim board I had a couple of two-inch fittings two ultra high molecular weight polyethylene bearing there basically and a stainless steel bolt it just spins in that bearing so this spins with the cage actually the water goes through the screen into this basically open spot right here the water that flows over this section right here engages the the wheel the the squirrel cage wheel which provides just enough force to keep them rolling and then the debris rolls off the top all the water goes in and then down to the reservoir this is stainless steel thin gauge to divert the water downward at the proper level this is a corrugated pipe we wanted nice even distribution this is spreader nicely even distribution of water on here to keep from having high spots and low spots but this thing works quite well today after the big rain it was overloaded and if you've got too much water flowing into this then it'll go outside and it'll stop the spinner and that's a problem so I'm trying to do with that that's what this is all about but it's really not quite large enough so under normal situations this is works well you can't overload it and then from here the clean water goes into a reservoir tank here now here because we've got high water I've got an overflow here which is limiting how much water overflows the spinner screen in the bottom of here are two four inch lines that you can't see because the water so turbine but from there they go 500 feet downstream to the nozzles for the turbine it's true go wheel that will generate about 500 watts at capacity right now we've got them valve down a little bit but I'll show you downstream what it looks like downstream here we have the 2 4 inch PVC lines that I've spray-painted for camouflage they go they have to cross the creek kiss we've got about a hundred foot span where I need to support them in the air I've got a 3/8 wire rope table anchored to a rock back there we use poplar trees for our our towers and they're on the supports from the trees are on vertical chains initially in order to allow the trees to move and not in the wind and not move the pipes at the top we ran this cheaper schedule 20 green pipe up the hill to keep the keep it level and the pressure down that stuff is not pressure rated we ran from there down we ran there this is more expensive schedule 40 PVC where the pressure builds up as we come down the hill to about 16 pounds at the turbo wheel down here by the creek again we've got another small cream crock stream crossing right here use the same system with the cable in the trees and the zig zag small lines holding the pipe r24 inch lines split into twin two-inch lines so we've got four two-inch lines going to a four nozzle housing that feeds a Harlington Grinspoon 22 wheel in the in the middle of the housing here I think this is Emmy 1603 to generate electricity and from here we've got three phase AC then we run through the wire some little hotter pair where the electronics change it to two phase DC that we have our batteries and our inverter [Applause] here we have the the electrical components right now we're running 24.8 at 17 amps I've got a valve down a little bit right now because I had some problems with the intake it'll go on up to 20 little over 20 amps we've got our overflow our emergency diversion heater right here the rectifier under the lid there is turning the AC into the DC which then feeds the batteries and the inverters right now I have the 400 watt inverter on which is building voltage in the in the battery's slightly well staying even actually the 600 watt inverter will go on when I want to use more power and when I turn out my other nozzle all get more amperage and it'll it'll feed the the bigger inverter from here we've got 500 feet of twin 12 gauge to 12 2s and a signal wire going up to the house which gives me control over the inverters and the voltage reading up at the house and that's so far what we got and it's an imperfect system but it's it's functioning well at the time

Channel: Greene Hydro

Views: 1,672,591

Rating: 4.7217035 out of 5

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Id: r0XKTtdeyc0

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 25 2020