Off Grid Micro Hydro - The Dream System!?

this off-grid homestead is powered by the most awesome micro hydro system it's it doesn't even seem like an off-grid power system check this out that was awesome [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] you want to see a stream engine yeah [Music] there it is that is the heart of it that's the magical thing that makes everything work really yeah that's it that little guy right there he's a stream engine [Music] says right there stream engine and it's from these guys energy systems and design look at that in canada new brunswick wow yeah and they're good guys they like they're still there and they're engineers and they'll answer your questions and this product has been running non-stop for 15 years wow isn't that crazy like you probably don't touch it yeah yeah put it probably it's like a really really fast potter's wheel right now yeah so it's got two nozzles but actually you don't you don't need to have them both turned on and in fact one of them is turned off right now i can turn it on let's see what happens speeds up yeah it kind of slowed down initially and then spit up and it's kind of weird because when you open the nozzle you you reduce the pressure so you get more flow but you reduce the pressure so it's not a perfect you know not necessarily at the perfect balance point so either way with that open it's now producing about 13 or 1400 watts wow continuous non-stop 24 7. explain to me how this works where does the water come in these are two two parallel pipes okay so it's not necessary let's just consider this one it's got the main pipe coming in it splits off and it goes up through here and into the turbine and then the other side of it comes up and over and into this side and yeah you don't need both nozzles on and like if you don't need the power you just you can shut it off so i'm gonna shut this one off and the pressure this thing is not totally right i think it's actually closer to 45 psi but but whatever and that's it look at this it's a pretty tidy little setup right yeah totally simple looking wouldn't it be a shame to just have too much power all the time what would we do with all those hot showers uh hot showers like non-stop we should go look at the intake because that's that's where this meets nature right that's where the stream is and uh we haven't been up there for a long time so it's probably overgrown a little bit let's go have a look here it is we're at the intake and this box right here this old wooden box is like the settling pond so water's coming in from in the main channel this ensures that the water going down to the house is clean and we're actually going to clean this thing out we're going to clean out the soap we can open up this gate at the end of that rope and flush this box out and clean it all out we're about 800 meters from the house in total pipe length and about 30 meters of elevation and you have to do your own research on hydro but hydro is all about the combination of flow rate versus pressure so you can have less elevation but you need a lot more water or you can have a really if you got really steep country you could have a little pipe with a little bit of you know gallons per minute but super high pressure this one it's kind of in the middle actually we are going to open the gate and flush it out oh look at it go [Music] now we've blocked the intake and now it's actually draining and flushing it all up and by blocked i mean like oh we just made it really noisy so the intake is kind of blocked but leaking quite a bit but it's blocked enough that the box is draining so now we can actually see the screen inlet to the pen stop so right there behind that screen is the pipe going down to the house it's like an ancient piece of technology in the woods out here in hydro generation they call it the trash rack the big screen and it collects all the debris that might want to go through it's crazy how this tiny creek looks just gentle and idyllic yeah but i give it a couple feet to fall and it suddenly turns into like a boiling cauldron yeah i can't believe that yeah it's amazing right so the water that's being flushed out of there it just daylights over in this ditch so look at that there's nothing up there but the drain pipe comes uh comes out of the ground there and then so every year this thing gets flushed out and keeps that intake nice and clean so the house is getting clean water because besides running their turbine they also have gravity pressurized water in their house and of course they want nice clean water okay and now we're letting this thing fill back up a bit i wonder how many bodies are at the bottom what doesn't it seem like the place where you'd find a body or like at least or at least like a sneaker with a foot in it or something okay it's filled back up all silt free and we're gonna flop the flushing gate back [Music] then we'll probably go eat toast or just leave some lights on in the house for no good reason or maybe have another hot shower not sure yet maybe all three this is an amazing setup this is not your typical off-grid solar where you kind of scrimp and save and you know for us when it's sunny we get to use the toaster and in the summer we have excess power and in the winter we don't this system is it's so different this system has constant power almost all year round only sometimes in really cold weather when the when the creek is freezing uh is the reduced power but otherwise it's full steam all the time and instead of figuring out you know what loads you can use what you have to figure out with this system is how to get rid of the excess power so this guy called a solar controller but how he's actually being used is to maintain the voltage below a certain level so right now it's at 52.5 ish volts and this thing will maintain that voltage by turning on the electrical heating element in this hot water tank so if the voltage goes any higher this guy turns on the hot water tank and so the hot water tank by consuming electrical power maintains the voltage when it's generating too much but also uh provides hot water for the whole house get hot water like for free kind of like as a bonus but if you're still not using enough then the hot water tank can get too hot so it needs a little protection device and that's what this little tiny guy does so he's checking the temperature in there 43.8 degrees right now celsius and if it gets too hot he'll open up this valve here and literally dump hot water outside i know it's terrible uh but that's a safety thing you don't want your hot water tank to blow up pretty cool stuff if you've got the right terrain if you've got running water if you've got a hillside with an elevation it can be amazing amazing you can have too much power but you can tell right there's a fair bit of infrastructure like compared to solar on unskilled you can still install a solar system in you know a few days or a week or two and with some help it's not too hard and it doesn't require hundreds of meters of underground trenching and all sorts of waterworks and then an intake infrastructure and a turbine so it's a lot more capital it's a lot more effort up front so it's uh you know it can be good it can be bad it it's definitely amazing if you have uh you know if you have a long-term plan for a property and you have hydro potential it seems like a pretty good deal so

Channel: Gridlessness

Views: 1,482,284

Keywords: off grid micro hydro, off-grid micro hydro power, micro hydro, off grid homestead, off-grid homestead, offgrid hydro power

Id: XyWQ3o6plY8

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Sat May 07 2022