Good day, all! I found this forum by reading an article in Home Power Magazine, which featured a micro-hydro guru who stated that he frequently responded to questions on this forum (Hi Chris!). Since he's from my neck of the woods, I thought I'd check it out. Always glad to have another pool of brains to pick, too. I've been studying AE for decades, but it took until last fall for me to find a place where I can put it into action. Despite all of my research and reading, I'm finding that actually DOING it is more challenging than even I had thought. Not to say I'd ever step away, now that I'm finally where I wanted to be…. just that you never really know about something until you do it.
My property has a decent stream which we know to run year-round. During the winter, it's a minor river which has cut a small canyon through our property as it winds its way to the Skagit River in the foothills of Washington's Cascade mountains. I haven't yet measured, but I estimate my head at roughly 25 - 30 feet. Probably 200-300 gpm in the winter, reduced to 50 to 100 gpm in the summer. I've been looking at the Turgo generator (New Zealand) for my plant. I have a 2" buried conduit running from my generator shed (located close to one bank of the stream near its lowest point) to my electrical room. My electrical run would be a straight shot of probably 85 to 100 feet to get it to where I'd place the charge controller. I'm looking to replace the Trace C-40 (currently in use for my solar array) with an MPPT controller, so I was thinking of re-tasking the Trace as a diversion load controller on the hydro side. The plan is to use an electric water heater as the diversion load. This would feed my LPG heater. I figured that even if I wasn't always heating water with that unit, just storing water in a tank, indoors would give it a chance to come up to room temperature before being heated by my LPG heater, reducing the energy requirement, there. It would also give me another way to store some more emergency water should something unthinkable happen.
This is all, of course, in the 'dreaming-of' stage, so there's no issue with changing my plans. Also, money is an issue (as anyone who's recently bought a house will likely know), so I need to make that a part of my plans. I'm hoping to use ABS pipe to build my penstock, and I'm thinking of 3" for the majority of the run. I'd love to go to 4", but the jump in price for that extra inch was truly an eye popper!
As Spock would say: "Your thoughts…. give them to me…"
-Brian