Garden Waterfall / Hydroelectric Micro-Generator Idea
 

If I understand you correctly, you are trying to invent a perpetual motion
machine.
Not a chance. You cannot get out more than you put in.
Best you could do is to drive the lights and maybe a lower power pump with
your turbine.
It will probably pay for itself in a couple of hundred years.

Nao




"Wild-Ideas" wrote in message
oups.com...
As you can see in the name, I tend to have some wild ideas, but I think
this one might actually be something.

I have a Waterfall feature in the works in my backyard. the slope I am
building it into will offer approximately a 10' drop from top basin to
bottom filter exchange basin.

With a pump powerfull enough to supply sufficient head pressure to make
the waterfall roar comes a price - high consumption of electricity. To
move the approximately 80GPM up what results in about a 15' Head height
(cost of the 20' run into the hill and the 90 degree bends required to
get it to the discharge as well as the 10' head) would be a pump
sucking down a relatively high 1000+ watts to maintain max pressure (I
have seen more efficient models, but at the premium of significant
price increase, which would offset any gain in electrical efficiency)

So, my basic theory is this:

With a pump capable of running DOUBLE the required volume I can do two
things:

1) Power my super sweet waterfall to a thundering roar at +/- 80GPM

2) Create a 10' Headheight watercolumn capable of driving a water
turbine that could produce (in theory) more than enough power to run
not only the pump that is driving the waterfall, but the lower power
skimmer pump, and most if not all of the lighting.

since I can find nothing online where anyone has tried this, I am much
more interested in someone shooting it down...

PS - I know I would need electricity to start the pump to start the
waterfall to start the generator to run the pump. I can put in a
simple startup switch that would run the primary pump off of the
utility service until it had reached sufficient generation capacity to
run free and then switch over. (also thinking about providing battery
storage and solar supplemental for this)