Pumping to a storage tank

Re: Pumping to a storage tank

There is not enough potential energy here to make it worth the capital investment. Micro hydro takes a lot of water to make it feasible, usually requiring 50' of head or more. Here's one example of a "low head" turbine:

"This micro-hydro generator is for those with low head but high volume installations. It can utilize a maximum of 1000 GPM falling 10 feet to produce 1kW of power."

It costs $3,000.

So if 1000 GPM makes 1kW, than 1 GPM makes 1W. (Not exactly, of course, but you get the idea).

Re: Pumping to a storage tank

The "falling 10 feet" is the "head". There is a trade-off between head pressure and flow: you need something of each, but can exchange some of one for some of the other to get the same net mechanical energy. The tricky bit is that for optimum power the turbine must be designed for either high flow rate or high pressure. If you feed one type of turbine with the other type of water flow you get poor results.

BTW, the first thing any turbine does is eat up some of that mechanical power just to run. That's why the output scale isn't linear, and higher power units are more efficient over-all - providing you have the water flow to run them.

The main problem with applying this to the OP's set-up is that he's filling water troughs; the flow out of the tank won't be constant and won't be at full flow most of the time (valves at trough open/close as needed). For a turbine to work you have to spin it up to speed and keep it going, otherwise you'll be running at a very low efficiency rate and losing potential power to re-starting the turbine every time the water starts to flow again.

Re: Pumping to a storage tank

'Struth!

BTW, I like your avatar.