I assure you, I know both ends of the stick, intimately...
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addjunkie
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I think two IBCs one each end of a seesaw with a a pair of turbines in the middle and a valve arrangment to direct flow would be almost perpetual motion.
And when it doesn't work the IBC cages could be used to store logs for the fire tube boiler and triple expansion steam engine.
gaz1
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whilst i agree you need a stop valve in low flow times at top and an access point at the bottom for clean outs debris can be reduced and so can dead animals however silt you will always get
the ibc can be used to do that by using a simple ball valve that can trigger an automatic valve being shut off thats at the top or can be used to trigger an auto shut off at the bottom so your not draining the ibc tank too low pulling the crap ( silt from the ibc tank )
whilst an ibc tank is better than a pipe system or even the shallow system built box as air can be an issue so the less air into the system the better the pipe on its own being the worst as it will get more air into that type of system
whilst damming the area isnt always an option the ibc or alternative underground water collection can be filled in winter months when theres more flow around of the stream and used in lean times
not to create more flow than whats available
Aka an ibc cistern with an inverted flush valve
Well to update anyone interested, I've walked the length of the stream and would say there's about 40m of head over 260-300m. As for the flow checking today before the rain it was at about 4L/s and that's been a full month of dry weather so a nice baseline - it should get up to 15L/s easily in the winter.
For the piping agricultural irrigation reels just happen to come most commonly in the 90/300 which can be had for £500-600 which is the price you'd pay for 150m of 63mm pipe so a bargain for 300m of 90mm! Plus on a trailer so easy to drag up the hill with a skidsteer and unspooled down the stream and trailer can be sold after to offset some of the cost since they're pretty robust or kept and used with the skidsteer.
Being the cheapskate I am I could probably build a functioning generator all in for £500 from an old direct drive washing machine motor and just order a turgo wheel however you can buy a complete generator setup from some creative kiwi's https://www.powerspout.com/collections/turgo-trg which is basically plug and play for ~£1400 and comes with 2yr warranty so probably a better option.
Solis inverters are perfect for use with hydro setups and the company will even honour the warranty of their solar mppt inverters when used for hydro in the correct voltage range so can either do a single string inverter feeding the ~800w constantly to offset the house load however it looks like we're more likely to get a dual mppt hybrid inverter for a solar + battery setup with the Hydro providing 24/7 which should make the grid draw near 0 whilst being able to export excess as it turns out there might be 3phase meaning an 11kw limit instead of 3.6kw whilst still on a g98 compliant setup.
For the piping agricultural irrigation reels just happen to come most commonly in the 90/300 which can be had for £500-600 which is the price you'd pay for 150m of 63mm pipe so a bargain for 300m of 90mm! Plus on a trailer so easy to drag up the hill with a skidsteer and unspooled down the stream and trailer can be sold after to offset some of the cost since they're pretty robust or kept and used with the skidsteer.
Being the cheapskate I am I could probably build a functioning generator all in for £500 from an old direct drive washing machine motor and just order a turgo wheel however you can buy a complete generator setup from some creative kiwi's https://www.powerspout.com/collections/turgo-trg which is basically plug and play for ~£1400 and comes with 2yr warranty so probably a better option.
Solis inverters are perfect for use with hydro setups and the company will even honour the warranty of their solar mppt inverters when used for hydro in the correct voltage range so can either do a single string inverter feeding the ~800w constantly to offset the house load however it looks like we're more likely to get a dual mppt hybrid inverter for a solar + battery setup with the Hydro providing 24/7 which should make the grid draw near 0 whilst being able to export excess as it turns out there might be 3phase meaning an 11kw limit instead of 3.6kw whilst still on a g98 compliant setup.
Of my specific plan no idea, however have spent god knows how many hours scouring the Internet i have found loads of info on SEPA regarding hydro and basically for setups producing what equates to a <100kw generator output t
I believe they are pretty encouraging for it as long as it doesn't obviously negatively affect the waters or fish etc.
They have basic flowcharts showing requirements and what situations are "provisionally accepted" and ultimately have multiple levels of "licences" where it goes from watching your every move during the build for massive sites on a complex licence to simple licence for smaller stuff to just register and inform them.
I believe based on the flow required say 9L/s (~770m³ a day) a simple licence is what I need and that's like ~£600 as covers 50-2000m³ a day.
It's all very confusing to understand as you have to jump between multiple different forms to understand the reference parts but I should be able to get it done legally, although I would be interested to know what other people who have installed hydro systems in Scotland did because I would be pretty confident in saying that most probably didn't inform since the streams are usually small enough to not be noticed/have an effect on anything and often buried into the hillside when nobody will ever see it.
I mean I was originally thinking of just doing that since this stream is literally one of several in the area feeding a larger river from a loch so the amount of flow going through it is barely anything compared to the others and it goes down a deep ravine so isn't used by animals or accessible by anyone so it wouldn't be causing any issues plus there is no fish or anything alive in the water apart from bugs/insects and I'd only be tapping part of the flow and using one of the natural water pockets at the top as the intake so wouldn't be building anything/blocking the flow.
I'm going to try and do it legally because hydro is encouraged as helps achieve government renewable targets etc and there is a lot of information out there since quite a few remote highland farms have done installations but if it starts to become an utter pain in the ass filling out forms and requiring stupid expenses I'll have to go with the unofficial approach which I can easily do with almost no impact to the environment or anyone.
is your catch point far away from the loch?
it's forever since I've spoken to him but I know a guy living on an island off the top of Scotland who runs hydro/solar (no grid there)
he dropped a tube into a loch to syphon water out of it and use it for hydro - works really well, no need to worry about leaves etc. getting trapped in the system
it's forever since I've spoken to him but I know a guy living on an island off the top of Scotland who runs hydro/solar (no grid there)
he dropped a tube into a loch to syphon water out of it and use it for hydro - works really well, no need to worry about leaves etc. getting trapped in the system
Hats off to you for grasping that nettle. Here in Wales renewables is encouraged too, but no-one has told NRW, so they do everything they can in their powers to make life hard, whether it's 5kW or 500, the hurdles are the same...
gaz1
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i think that is across the board anything to cause red tape so you cant generate yourself as we want to sell you ours
i wouldnt tell them id just get on with it as long as it comes onto my land at the same place and leaves at the same place and ive gained power generation all should be fine
but what others have done is actually moved the river itself and thats the main issue you cant move a natural flowing river to another part just to benefit you
if you do build it make sure you never stop that flow it must continue to run even if you have issues with your system
so if your generation unit fails you must have a bypass to continue the flow of water
It's basically 300m up the stream in the ravine section.
I'm assuming you're not Kris harbour with the fact you know so much about hydro and are in wales?
Well the way to get around the red tape regarding export is for g98 certificates you only need to declare anything on the AC side such as the inverter or AC tied batteries as it needs to be approved and on the ena type test register so if you do a diy solar installation and use octopus energy as they have the option for non mcs installs by paying £250 so just get a standard sparky to wire the inverter in then nobody cares.
I believe for a mcs install they note the panels and anything else so you would need to mention the hydro setup although it isn't mcs approved (but perhaps it only applies to panels since few grid tied turbines but they don't seem to have mcs certificates?) and if you changed the setup the mcs certificate needs updating to reflect that so either off grid or don't get paid to export or self cert via octopus.
I'll have to keep researching and contact some mcs registered installers to see what they know.
No.
Turbines do not carry mcs accreditation.
Yea found some 2013 era .gov site saying micro hydro turbines will become certified once they have the documentation for them but that went the same way as a tory campaign promise
If I can find out if you can edit a mcs solar setup without having to update the mcs after (like adding more panels/batteries) then I can get the mcs setup and add hydro later but it seems easier to just do unofficial and not get paid for export or do octopus non-mcs for £250 or just complete off grid.
Here's some background on the location, obviously any tech savvy person could work out the area if the wanted to just edited since "public" forum.
Pin is rough area turbine/pipe will go, pics with numbers 1+2 give you an idea of the stream size and map/satellite gives overall idea of the waterways.
These gifs give an idea how steep the ravine is, couple thousand years ago it would have been almost a 30m drop over 100m distance!
