homebru hydro update: mixed results

 I've been working on a hydro-electric setup for my house:
http://www.jeffersonfreestate.org/hh/

I've got it plumbed into my pond feed and have been testing and modifying
it.  I lent my camera to a girfriend and she's not returned it so no new
pics.

In any case after changing the plumbing and building some brakets that
let me aim the jets better I was very very happy with the crazy amount of
power potential in the system.

I can spin the penton wheel like a madman -- i'd say at least 2000 rpm
and thats with only one jet.  I had to build a rubber gasket generator
mount to help moderate the vibration -- but its amazing how fast that
sucker is spinning when you crank it all the way up.  Hard to say how
fast its going, but its fast.  It sounds a lot like when I redline my tii
:)

So the jet and water design part seems to be pretty good -- the bummer is
the generator appears to be no good.  It never gets above about .5 volts
and negligable amps, no matter how fast you spin it.


I'm not surprised since its so old, but I was expecting a lot more.  
Given the amount of power the water seems to have I think its probably
worth while buying a good PMA generator of some kind

i'm going to take the generator apart and see if there is something
obviously wrong with it.  Also there is a joint that rebuilds them a few
towns away, but probably should just bite the bullet and get the real
thing.

So thats it so far.  Water+jet+Wheel design = good.  Generator = bad.

if anyone has a contact for good PMA generators or the like please chime
in!

cheers

-z

  If you use a car alternator, you 'waste' a couple amps driving the
coil, but the advantage is if you drive it with a microcontroller and
a mosfet and pwm, the voltage is 'throttleable', which might make it
easier to match up to an inverter or battery charger for example...

 22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com:


yeah.  I bench tested the gen tonight and its fubared.  I ended up ordering
a pma delco alternator ..

a guy on the page has a similar setup to what i'm doing

http://www.windbluepower.com/articles.asp?ID 9

so I said what the hell.  

We'll see what kind of power it makes.

 Even the low wind unit they advertise shows 150 RPM to generate
minimum voltage. Are you sure you can generate this kind of RPM speed
from the turbine?

 

    He's estimating 2000rpm@0 load; I guess we'll see, eh?