Charging batteries with water

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Badblue

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I've never seen a mention of this ....

Why don't we havehydro-electric systems that charge batteries when we use our water. I have like 80psi city water. That flowing water could generate power for me. Store it, use it, rinse and repeat.

Has anyone tried this?
 
I thought about this years ago and wondered the same thing. For people on well water, it wouldn't be feasible as you use electricity to get the water outta the ground and pressurize it, then use that to generate electricity. Although, you might reclaim about 25% of what was put in.
But for those people who are on city water, this could be done. The only problem tho, is it's an off/on deal. The generator wouldn't run for any length of time to put any real useful amount out. Unless you're watering the lawn. Other than that, I think the cost of building and installing such a system would far outweigh any benefits it would produce.
 
For a home owner its better to lower the pressure if you wanna save energy. I dont see the benefit in doing it im afraid. The amount of water flowing is not enough to produce any significant energy in long run. If you start to look at how much water you need and how much it need to travel under x time you will see that there is not that much energy to gain in just intercepting your water in the tap :p
 
daromer said:
For a home owner its better to lower the pressure if you wanna save energy. I dont see the benefit in doing it im afraid. The amount of water flowing is not enough to produce any significant energy in long run. If you start to look at how much water you need and how much it need to travel under x time you will see that there is not that much energy to gain in just intercepting your water in the tap :p
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What you need to do is install your turbine onyour neighborhoods main line so it's always flowing ;)
 
Korishan said:
I thought about this years ago and wondered the same thing. For people on well water, it wouldn't be feasible as you use electricity to get the water outta the ground and pressurize it, then use that to generate electricity. Although, you might reclaim about 25% of what was put in.
But for those people who are on city water, this could be done. The only problem tho, is it's an off/on deal. The generator wouldn't run for any length of time to put any real useful amount out. Unless you're watering the lawn. Other than that, I think the cost of building and installing such a system would far outweigh any benefits it would produce.
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As far as i know everyturbine is gravity fed and is how all hydroelectric systems create electricity, but what about a high pressure system? 80psi is a lot of pressure and can push with a lot of force, therefor greater energy can be created. I could easily spare some pressure anyway, my shower could strip gum off a sidewalk.
I wonder what the maths would tell us?

I'm the outside the box kinda thinker. Just ignore me if i sound daft.
 
Gravity fed is pressure/psi driven. Water is about 8lbs per square inch. Build a dam that's 100 ft tall = 1200psi, then multiply that by how ever big the pipe is.

80psi sounds like a lot to us, but it's nothing compared to commercial grade.

Now, for those people who build theirs from a creek/river, they have ample flow. It's not all about psi, it's also about flow, gallons/liters per minute. There are calculations that will give you the amount of water flow required to meet a certain Wattage output, at 100% efficiency. Which, never happens and closest you can probably get is about 70%, if that with home made equipment.

Over all, it is not feasible. But if you want to build one for learning, by all means go ahead and do it. Just don't expect to get much power from it.

And, as I mentioned before, you would need a constant flow of water to make any worth while power. And that flow would need to be at least 2 inch pipe for flow.
 
We are talking a bout few watts that you get out :p its better to lower the pressure to save electricity or just jump onto the bike pedaled generator :p
 
Follow up question: What if super capacitors were used? Then those caps could charge your battery pack. Like regenerative braking on electric cars ... they recover lots of energy in a short time but are unable to burst charge the battery pack without capacitors.

Perhaps applicable on multi-dwelling buildings or placed where water is used more frequently.
 
With water being charged at a rate of over 1 per m3 in the UK, a 80pis head of water and turbine efficiency of say 70% you would run at a loss of over 100 per kWh.

This assumes 15p/kWh, 11.3kW at head height of 55m (78psi), 70% efficiency and flow rate of 30 litres per second using 108m3 of water per hour.

If your not metered then your generated power is costing everyone else on the network more than the value you are getting so depends on if you view that as fair. That is in the case the water is just flowing to get the power and put directly into the drain.

The alternative view is to fill up a bath (say 100 litres) with water you could get around 11Wh out, so just enough to charge a single cell.

Hydro is great but the physical scale of water and heights involved is sometimes a magnitude or more larger than we think..

Appologies if my calcs are out slightly..

Another point is the pressure is needed in some instances to push the water into and through the pipework at a rate that allows a shower and boiler to work at a flow rate the typical non energy sensitive consumer wants.... drop the pressure the flow drops... just like volts in a battery.

Some hydro in Norway is over 1000m head height and over 1400pis, minly rock tunnels with steel piping at the turbines and lead-in / out. The main issue with hydro is avoiding water hammer whn you try to stop many tonnes of water from moving in a pipe with a valve, imagine trying to stop a train 3000m long in the space of 5 seconds. Water can create massive energy surges that even the pipes will not hold and hydro schemes can have surge pipes to allow the high pressures to flow out or bypass.

Supercaps can store energy very quickly but you then still need a generator to create the power and this is the issue of having a generator designed for short multi second pulses running 24x7 at a fraction of its capacity.
 
completelycharged said:
With water being charged at a rate of over 1 per m3 in the UK, a 80pis head of water and turbine efficiency of say 70% you would run at a loss of over 100 per kWh.

This assumes 15p/kWh, 11.3kW at head height of 55m (78psi), 70% efficiency and flow rate of 30 litres per second using 108m3 of water per hour.

If your not metered then your generated power is costing everyone else on the network more than the value you are getting so depends on if you view that as fair. That is in the case the water is just flowing to get the power and put directly into the drain.

The alternative view is to fill up a bath (say 100 litres) with water you could get around 11Wh out, so just enough to charge a single cell.

Hydro is great but the physical scale of water and heights involved is sometimes a magnitude or more larger than we think..

Appologies if my calcs are out slightly..

Another point is the pressure is needed in some instances to push the water into and through the pipework at a rate that allows a shower and boiler to work at a flow rate the typical non energy sensitive consumer wants.... drop the pressure the flow drops... just like volts in a battery.

Some hydro in Norway is over 1000m head height and over 1400pis, minly rock tunnels with steel piping at the turbines and lead-in / out. The main issue with hydro is avoiding water hammer whn you try to stop many tonnes of water from moving in a pipe with a valve, imagine trying to stop a train 3000m long in the space of 5 seconds. Water can create massive energy surges that even the pipes will not hold and hydro schemes can have surge pipes to allow the high pressures to flow out or bypass.

Supercaps can store energy very quickly but you then still need a generator to create the power and this is the issue of having a generator designed for short multi second pulses running 24x7 at a fraction of its capacity.




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Thanks for the detailed reply.
I guess its just a"pipe" dream of mine.. LOL
 
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