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Domestic PicoHydro - Help and Advice Needed

Started by furnessp, January 22, 2021, 05:22:10 PM

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furnessp

Hello all, some great items in this forum.

I am looking for some help and advice please on a domestic picohydro venture.

I am lucky enough to have on my own property a fairly large pool of water (c. 30mx20m and about 5ft depth at it's deepest) that already has a purpose-made drain hole leading to a vertical drop of potentially around 10m. The pool of water is constantly fed from a stream and land drainage and the flow out of the drain hole is around 6 litre/s.

I am very keen to find out if it would be feasible to install a small 'turbine' such as a pelton etc. and if so, what kind of output could I expect.

I don't need it to be a large output and it doesn't need to be constant either. I have already a solar - powered battery storage system that primarily looks after all the needs of where I live (with a diesel generator for backup), so I am only looking to use the output from the hydro as a "top up" of the batteries.

The solar and generator inputs are managed by a Victron Energy controller, and as far as I am aware another input source can be added.

It would be a travesty to not see if I can exploit this water flow, given the infrastructure is pretty much there.

Can anyone offer any help or advice, or point me in the right direction.

I am not looking to do this on a shoestring budget but give it the attention it deserves, given it could be providing clean energy for decades to come.

Many thanks all.