Trying to decide between a traditional waterwheel, and a pvc based, siphon fed microhydro.
Adequate head pressure for both.
Pros for the traditional, repairability with hand tools, and primitive materials. Ability to use a variety of power production units, including old alternators.
Pros for the microhydro, greater efficiency, easier to build, quieter, possibly easier to maintain, though not certain about that in practice.
Thoughts?
who much verticle drop you have?
depends what you wanna grow. my friend decided on siphon
How much debris do you have in the water supply? Micro can gum up with tiny sticks
Contemplating the same thing. I’m going for the traditional waterwheel. The microhydros are usually lower power, and the higher rpm usually Pelton turbines, while being higher efficiency dynamically, suffer larger frictional losses both in the bearings and the turbine box. Pelton turbines are best with massive volume and velocity with large diameter turbines operating at low rpm. Usually this is not feasible in small scale power production. Waterwheels produce massive torque that can easily be converted to alternator relevant rpm using bicycle gearing, and as an added bonus, the ratio is easily adapted to the available torque. The waterwheel I’m building is undershot, and will be roughly 4 meters in diameter. I hope this helps!
Its a tremendous help. Thank you.
Awesome! The water wheels also cope with debris much better, and filtering debris is much more difficult in practice than it seems it should be. Another thing to think about is variation in seasonal flow, and how to allow excess to safely bypass without damaging the wheel. There are some elegant designs out there, some using culverts and concrete forms.
