If you believe that you have a water resource like a stream, small river or old mill workings which would be sufficient to provide electricity generation for your home or business then a PowerSpout turbine could be right for you.
PowerSpout have three turbines in their range which cover a wide range of site conditions.
Will generate up to 1.6kW on sites with a head between 3 and 130 metres and a water flow between 0.1 and 8 litres/sec (lps)
Will generate up to 1.6kW on sites with a head between 2 and 30 metres and a water flow between 7 and 15 lires/sec (lps)
Is designed for sites where there is a high volume of water but not much height and is frequently used in old mill streams where the water wheel is derelict. It will generate up to 1.6kW on sites with a head between 2 and 5 metres and a water flow between 25 and 55 litres/se (lps)
The actual power that any turbine can produce is dependent on your water resource.
Solar PV is easy. Just install it, connect it up and it does the rest. It starts to generate electricity when enough light falls onto the solar modules in the morning and how much it will generate through the day depends on the amount of light available. Then at night it simply shuts itself down until the next morning.
Wind Turbines are quite easy. They typically start generating electricity when the wind speed reaches 3 metres per second and will continue to generate over a wide and fluctuating wind speed up to around 15 metres per second when they automatically shut themselves down for safety reasons.
Hydro is different. The energy source is a volume of water falling through a vertical distance. (Flow in litres per second and head in metres) Just like solar PV and wind, the amount of water available can vary widely over winter and summer, or following heavy and prolonged rainfall.
Unlike solar PV and wind turbines which can cope with wide variations in light and wind speed respectively, the hydro electric turbine requires a constant and steady flow of water to generate electricity efficiently 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Every Hydro Electric Turbine is designed specifically for the site where it is going to be installed.
There is no "Off The Shelf” or "One Size Fits All” turbine available.
A typical installation will have a small impoundment dam in a stream well up a hill from where a pipe (penstock) takes off some of the water available in the stream and conveys it down the hill to the turbine site where the water passes through nozzles at high velocity to strike an impellor causing it to rotate and drive the alternator to generate electricity. The water then falls out of the bottom of the turbine housing and is diverted back into the stream again.
The amount of energy (electricity) we can get out of the turbine depends on the volume of water delivered to the turbine and the vertical distance it is falling. (Flow and head)
The head is the vertical distance measured between the turbine inlet and the point in the stream at which you will position the penstock inlet and is generally measured in metres. The flow is the volume of water you will take out of the stream and down the penstock to the turbine. This is measured in litres per second. The formula for calculating the potential power output in Watts of a specific site is quite simple:-
Head (metres) x Flow (l/s) x Gravity (9.81) x Turbine efficiency (50%). A stream with a head of 16 metres and an abstraction rate of 10 litres per second will look like this:-
16 x 10 x 9.81 x 0.50 = 785 Watts (0.785 kW)
There are many variables which can affect the output:-
When all of these measurements have been taken and the calculations made, your turbine can be manufactured to suit your site specifically. If any of the parameters change then the turbine may not operate efficiently, or at all without modifications to the nozzle sizes and perhaps the generator as well.