Hydro power

[My Old Landy]

Your sums are wrong. Energy given, gather than just stored needs flow. You’ve double counted height.
If you have 3.5m times 9.81 times flow (say 20 l/s down your IBC pipe?) gives you 687Watts, until your IBC starts draining lower and lower... I ignored efficiency, usually .75 or thereabouts.
The actual full calculation takes in specific gravity of the fluid of course, but since mostly water is used that neatly cancels out.
I say mostly, because someone who I’ve known for a few years has created a company to use a denser /heavier than water fluid, so you don’t need pipes as big, or as much flow etc.
And to the person who said small turbines are less efficient - no they aren’t really, most turbine efficiency is down to type, and how well they are designed and built. The pipe losses can wipe out a lot of energy, if the velocities are allowed to go above 1.7 m/s or so

Ai you did.
Say you stacked up 3 IBCs, (Or rather approximate 3 IBCs as a column of water 1x1.2m square, 3m high), that has a gravitational potential energy of 3600kg * 9.81 [m/s^-2] * 1.5m (Average height) = 53,000 Joules

You have a gravitational energy of 3600kg - this is due to height times the weight of water. Then you multiplied it by 1.5m ...
No flow equals no power.
And to counter @PhillipM , you would need to be down at micro sized bearings before the losses would increase enough to lose you efficiency, and even then it would be tiny and difficult to measure.
I’m not making this up, I do it every day, and have done for some years noView attachment 386745

A couple I built earlier...

I like the control cubicle. What HMI system are you using or is that confidential? I design control systems for a living so interested

 

[minimutly]

Mitsubishi plc with got 2000 hmi. I currently am having to go down this route with two simple shoebox and one line hmi requirements - our company has people that tell other people what they can and can’t use. so the simple cheap option at £500 is out, £4.5 grand option it has to be. I’ve stopped letting it wind me up, it’s not my money...

 

[My Old Landy]

Mitsubishi plc with got 2000 hmi. I currently am having to go down this route with two simple shoebox and one line hmi requirements - our company has people that tell other people what they can and can’t use. so the simple cheap option at £500 is out, £4.5 grand option it has to be. I’ve stopped letting it wind me up, it’s not my money...

We have switched over to Siemens so also expensive especially the scada/hmi programming software!

 

[Maker]

You have a gravitational energy of 3600kg - this is due to height times the weight of water. Then you multiplied it by 1.5m ...

I still don't see the mistake. 3600kg of water but some of it is at 0m and some of it is at 3m, it's the same stored energy as if all the water was sitting at 1.5m. You could work out mass*height by integrating height*area, with respect to height from 0 to 3 metres, you'll get the same answer.

Of course it doesn't become power until there's some flow, but that doesn't really matter, you'll either get more power for less time or less power for more time, it's limited by the energy stored.

 

[minimutly]

I still don't see the mistake. 3600kg of water but some of it is at 0m and some of it is at 3m, it's the same stored energy as if all the water was sitting at 1.5m. You could work out mass*height by integrating height*area, with respect to height from 0 to 3 metres, you'll get the same answer.

Of course it doesn't become power until there's some flow, but that doesn't really matter, you'll either get more power for less time or less power for more time, it's limited by the energy stored.

Oh I see, you’re assuming infinite flow. In that case I see your argument.
Three IBCs are not going to run the tumble drier....

 

[Robotstar5]

We have switched over to Siemens so also expensive especially the scada/hmi programming software!

The only Siemens software I've used is the TIA Portal when the company sent me on a course then they decided not to use Siemens PLC & HMI's after all I did find it quite good, but more used to working with Allen Bradley & Modicon stuff.

 

[Erie Fred]

I hate,
X amount of double deckers
X amount of football fields.

I'm not a child give me a sodding number

Yabutt ....it seems the average viewer these days cannot count above 10 without removing footwear....

 

[My Old Landy]

The only Siemens software I've used is the TIA Portal when the company sent me on a course then they decided not to use Siemens PLC & HMI's after all I did find it quite good, but more used to working with Allen Bradley & Modicon stuff.

I have used studio 5000 for projects, purely for ladder logic. TIA portal is the stuff we have just got at £6k a seat! It is easy to produce both scada and HMI interfaces. You do need the add on packages though so a £2k licence soon rises in cost!

 

[Bullet2012]

give me a sodding number

42

 

[minimutly]

I have used studio 5000 for projects, purely for ladder logic. TIA portal is the stuff we have just got at £6k a seat! It is easy to produce both scada and HMI interfaces. You do need the add on packages though so a £2k licence soon rises in cost!

I did a bit with AB PLCs a few years ago - nice simple logical stuff. Then I had to draw up the pages for the crt based hmi, I forget what it was called. It was painfully illogical to work out the data structures between PLC and this - ah I remember now, Panelview. Thankfully, it was all binned. We are very much tied to our framework for this stuff, not so long ago it was Siemens - the Step7 stuff nigh on wrote off my laptop, took 2 hrs to load it. It was not well liked.

 

[Morrisman]

I remember a story in the news many years a go where chap had was running a small hydro unit in his bath, left the taps running to power some lights.

That's good, if you're on unmetered water.