I love to see some micro hydro mining ideas! I've got a creek with about 10ft of drop on the homestead but it's a pretty low flow rate.
Have you heard of anyone siphoning a pond high on the land into a lower pond and generating power? Then refilling it with a solar pump. Could be like a big battery... Who knows maybe it could be efficient?
I had a similar thought years ago, but with a ram pump. Solar would be better (or faster at least). I haven't seen it. But I don't know many people around here quite like me.
I have a few streams here on the farm, and an old dam originally built for hydro power in the '40s. I go round and round about what to move forward. When I do, I'd love to document it all here like you do.
Reverse pumps exist so you can actually generate when you allow flow and pump when you push electricity. The issue is, can’t find them small scale. If you find something for flow that fits your case, please let me know.
What is that called or do you have an example of one? Sounds interesting!
Ive been looking into this for the past couple months.
I think I am going to try a traditional overshot water wheel.
We have the stream for it.
Additionally, for upper pond to lower pond, if you have some flow, you could add a ram pump into the mix. you would lose some energy in the system as a whole, requiring a solar pump at the end, but it could save you some battery cycles.
