Homebrewed Electricity > Hydro

Home made hydro help

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SteveB:
Hope someone can help me, I have built a home made hydroelectric system. However I don’t seem to be able to produce enough power to charge my 24V AGM batteries. My main power is from Solar , but I live in N Spain where I can’t rely on the sun .

So I live in a mill , which has a 3 M water shoot from a canal . The water is flowing enough to turn the wheel 15rpm . I have another wheel that has cogs ,that then turns a small cog wheel 11-1 ratio.
Attached is a 42 toothed bicycle sprocket.
I’ve taken off the blades from a 24v 800w wind turbine generator. On this I’ve put a small bicycle sprocket, with a ratio of 4-1.Giving me a total Rpm of 660.

It is 3 phase Ac , which passes through a charge controller converting to Dc .

With no load it rotates faster giving me a 3 phase V of 36v

So as soon as I put it on the load it slows to the speed I have mentioned, and only produces 20v .

From my description does anyone have an idea , what is wrong ? Quite possibly it’s me a novice at all this ! Or another cause ! From my research 660rpm should produce enough power to charge the batteries.

I can’t speed the water wheel up anymore, the only thing is to change the gearing if that seems the problem!

Look forward to seeing your comments, and ideas

Steve Spain

Mary B:
Smaller generator to match the available power...

Vortechs:
The friction losses from all that gearing could be eating up a lot of your potential power. I don't know the generator you're using, do you know the rpm range it's designed to charge at? A smartdrive might be better as they can be configured to charge at quite slow speeds.

Are your AGM batteries good? What's their standing voltage? Are they the load you're connecting when getting 20v?

Got any pics?

mab:
Power is proportional to the vertical height that the water falls whilst on the wheel;
 It's also proportional to the quantity of water going over the wheel. Doing a rough calc for a 3m overshot(?) Waterwheel and arbitrarily assuming 10l/s flow: 10 litres per second should give you around 100w out of the wheel, then you lose some in your 2 stage gearing up: if the bearings are good and it's not completely gunged up with grease i might expect at least 50w out.

You don't say what load you're using that drops the voltage to 20v? Nor how many amps you get at 20v? If the unloaded voltage is 36v then it should put something into a 24v battery as is.

joestue:
Call up hvac companies and get a dead 1hp 1250rpm ecm fan motor.

Reconfigure the coils from 4s -Y to 2s 2p Y or 4s Delta or 2s 2p delta... As needed, to get the load and charging voltage you want.

Most of the ecm fan motors will either need new bearings, or glue the magnets back on, or there is nothing wrong and the vfd is what failed.

They are just about the most efficient commodity motor generator available

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