Join us FREE, we're FREE to use
Web's largest swingers site since 2006.
Already registered?
Login here
Join us FREE, we're FREE to use
Web's largest swingers site since 2006.
Already registered?
Login here
 | Back to forum list |
| Back to The Lounge |
| Jump to newest |  |
| |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"Remember at school learning how great hydro electric power was? You know turbines at the bottom of waterfalls? Well we have no end of tower blocks. How about piping water to the top of them and putting a turbine in the carpark below? Discuss..." It would take just as much energy to pump it up there than you'd get back from the turbine at the bottom so no point | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"Remember at school learning how great hydro electric power was? You know turbines at the bottom of waterfalls? Well we have no end of tower blocks. How about piping water to the top of them and putting a turbine in the carpark below? Discuss... It would take just as much energy to pump it up there than you'd get back from the turbine at the bottom so no point" Could put them in gutter down pipes to generate power when it rains though. | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
| |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
| |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
| |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"On a slight tangent, I have thought, for many years not just in response to the current energy price rises, why there couldn’t be local hydro electric sources in rural areas, the same way there were mills in the past. In the village I live near there were 2 mills, one was still in use up until the 60’s. Instead of the water wheels driving the gears for the mill couldn’t it be used to drive an electrical generator. " Water powered mills ambled along slowly. Most upgraded to steam as soon as they could. Would a typical water wheel generate any more than a "cottage industry" level of leccy? We'd all need a personal water wheel. | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"On a slight tangent, I have thought, for many years not just in response to the current energy price rises, why there couldn’t be local hydro electric sources in rural areas, the same way there were mills in the past. In the village I live near there were 2 mills, one was still in use up until the 60’s. Instead of the water wheels driving the gears for the mill couldn’t it be used to drive an electrical generator. Water powered mills ambled along slowly. Most upgraded to steam as soon as they could. Would a typical water wheel generate any more than a "cottage industry" level of leccy? We'd all need a personal water wheel. " No, it wouldn’t be practical for large conurbations but in rural villages say 100 to 150 homes I would have thought a wheel could be geared to give enough power to drive a reasonable sized generator. I’ve seen the wheel on our village mill going at a fair lick. | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"On a slight tangent, I have thought, for many years not just in response to the current energy price rises, why there couldn’t be local hydro electric sources in rural areas, the same way there were mills in the past. In the village I live near there were 2 mills, one was still in use up until the 60’s. Instead of the water wheels driving the gears for the mill couldn’t it be used to drive an electrical generator. Water powered mills ambled along slowly. Most upgraded to steam as soon as they could. Would a typical water wheel generate any more than a "cottage industry" level of leccy? We'd all need a personal water wheel. No, it wouldn’t be practical for large conurbations but in rural villages say 100 to 150 homes I would have thought a wheel could be geared to give enough power to drive a reasonable sized generator. I’ve seen the wheel on our village mill going at a fair lick." We're semi rural and there's 22,000 people in this conurbation! We'd need to have one whizzing round at least as fast as the revolving doors of No.10  | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"On a slight tangent, I have thought, for many years not just in response to the current energy price rises, why there couldn’t be local hydro electric sources in rural areas, the same way there were mills in the past. In the village I live near there were 2 mills, one was still in use up until the 60’s. Instead of the water wheels driving the gears for the mill couldn’t it be used to drive an electrical generator. Water powered mills ambled along slowly. Most upgraded to steam as soon as they could. Would a typical water wheel generate any more than a "cottage industry" level of leccy? We'd all need a personal water wheel. No, it wouldn’t be practical for large conurbations but in rural villages say 100 to 150 homes I would have thought a wheel could be geared to give enough power to drive a reasonable sized generator. I’ve seen the wheel on our village mill going at a fair lick." The torque delivered by a typical 10ft diameter overshot water wheel can drive a whole mill comprising a succession of wooden gears, shafts and devices which represent a huge amount of mechanical resistance to its rotation... a seriously huge amount of torque is required to overcome this to maintain that geared up rotation. If you remove all that resistance and replace it with a modern generator of a similar resistance similarly geared up then you could generate quite a hefty amount of power. The technology already exists to do this quite easily on a small to medium scale sufficiently widely to provide electricity to the grid similarly to the current (pun intended) grid-tied FIT scheme. The problem isn't a technological one - it's an ideological one. It requires those who decide to implement such infrastructure projects to overcome their inclination to favour huge corporations operating at the macro scale - and that's not going to happen while we allow them to give political donations and revolving door consultancies in exchange for continued dominance of national grid supply. Without any political will to democratise energy production, the only way ordinary people can make it happen is by forming cooperatives to set them up to supply locally, which is feasible if it can be combined with other inputs (solar, wind, etc) to provide continuity of supply in all conditions. In times of over production, excess energy can be either diverted to a commonly accessible dump load (say, pre-heating water) or flow can be reduced. It's all perfectly possible. | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
| |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
| |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"On a slight tangent, I have thought, for many years not just in response to the current energy price rises, why there couldn’t be local hydro electric sources in rural areas, the same way there were mills in the past. In the village I live near there were 2 mills, one was still in use up until the 60’s. Instead of the water wheels driving the gears for the mill couldn’t it be used to drive an electrical generator. Water powered mills ambled along slowly. Most upgraded to steam as soon as they could. Would a typical water wheel generate any more than a "cottage industry" level of leccy? We'd all need a personal water wheel. No, it wouldn’t be practical for large conurbations but in rural villages say 100 to 150 homes I would have thought a wheel could be geared to give enough power to drive a reasonable sized generator. I’ve seen the wheel on our village mill going at a fair lick. The torque delivered by a typical 10ft diameter overshot water wheel can drive a whole mill comprising a succession of wooden gears, shafts and devices which represent a huge amount of mechanical resistance to its rotation... a seriously huge amount of torque is required to overcome this to maintain that geared up rotation. If you remove all that resistance and replace it with a modern generator of a similar resistance similarly geared up then you could generate quite a hefty amount of power. The technology already exists to do this quite easily on a small to medium scale sufficiently widely to provide electricity to the grid similarly to the current (pun intended) grid-tied FIT scheme. The problem isn't a technological one - it's an ideological one. It requires those who decide to implement such infrastructure projects to overcome their inclination to favour huge corporations operating at the macro scale - and that's not going to happen while we allow them to give political donations and revolving door consultancies in exchange for continued dominance of national grid supply. Without any political will to democratise energy production, the only way ordinary people can make it happen is by forming cooperatives to set them up to supply locally, which is feasible if it can be combined with other inputs (solar, wind, etc) to provide continuity of supply in all conditions. In times of over production, excess energy can be either diverted to a commonly accessible dump load (say, pre-heating water) or flow can be reduced. It's all perfectly possible." Power is torque *and* speed. The gearing increases the torque but decreases the rotational speed because you don't need that much power to grind corn. A water wheel just needed to provide more power than person or a horse in order to make sense. There is a waterwheel in Langdale that is just over 4m in diameter and converts a water flow rate of 200l/s into 6kW of power. That a big wheel in a very wet part of the country with enough power for a handful of homes - 6kW would power maybe 3 kettles at the same time. They certainly are feasible, but only in a very limited number of places. Total power available to extract (W) = fall height(m) x flow rate (l/s) x gravity (9.81 m/s/s) From this equation its is quickly obvious that unless you have a steep stream with a high flow rate you're not going to get much power. Outside of mountainous rainy parts of the UK they're simply not feasible for anything other than (at best) single building supply. Mr | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"Remember at school learning how great hydro electric power was? You know turbines at the bottom of waterfalls? Well we have no end of tower blocks. How about piping water to the top of them and putting a turbine in the carpark below? Discuss..." More energy used to pipe it up than energy produced Next | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
| |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"The benefit of gravity fed hydro (on top of tower blocks in this case) is that it acts as a battery. Pump the water up during off-peak times using energy from renewable sources that can't currently be easily stored. Store it in a big tank on the roof and either trickle charge storage batteries in each apartment or have some kind of on demand usage. " A good idea in theory, but you’ll probably my find the materials and labour cost of making that happen would make it pointless Even solar panels, which are cheap compared to this idea, take 5-10 years to turn a profit This setup might take 20-30 years before you see anything, especially since the maintenance on that kinda system would be more than solar too | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
 | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"Retrofitting an existing tower block would certainly be impractical. It would need to be built into a next-gen block. One that's heavily insulated, uses only low voltage systems and has a energy generating and recovery innovations. Solar panel curtain walls, regenerative braking on the elevators, up draught mini wind turbines, gravity hydro... It takes a big investment and shift in mindset but it would be possible. "The issue I’m seeing is that your only focusing on what it provides, not what it costs to get there Regenerative brakes on a lift just don’t work. The energy you’d get from them wouldn’t even cover the cost of installing and maintaining them What we should be focusing on is maximising solar power, because it’s the best thing to use for our current buildings, and batteries keep getting better and cheaper | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"Remember at school learning how great hydro electric power was? You know turbines at the bottom of waterfalls? Well we have no end of tower blocks. How about piping water to the top of them and putting a turbine in the carpark below? Discuss... It would take just as much energy to pump it up there than you'd get back from the turbine at the bottom so no point" 
Well that's that discussion sorted
I really dont like it when someone ends there post with discuss
Most of us are intelligent adults not primary school children | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"Remember at school learning how great hydro electric power was? You know turbines at the bottom of waterfalls? Well we have no end of tower blocks. How about piping water to the top of them and putting a turbine in the carpark below? Discuss... It would take just as much energy to pump it up there than you'd get back from the turbine at the bottom so no point
Well that's that discussion sorted
I really dont like it when someone ends there post with discuss
Most of us are intelligent adults not primary school children "Post something intelligent then? | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"Remember at school learning how great hydro electric power was? You know turbines at the bottom of waterfalls? Well we have no end of tower blocks. How about piping water to the top of them and putting a turbine in the carpark below? Discuss... It would take just as much energy to pump it up there than you'd get back from the turbine at the bottom so no point
Well that's that discussion sorted
I really dont like it when someone ends there post with discuss
Most of us are intelligent adults not primary school children
Post something intelligent then?"Ok back in the great depression of the 1920s in order to create meaningful employment to folk in New Zealand, a program of building hydro electric plants was commissioned which was funded by the government ,which is one of the reasons that NZ are pretty much self reliant for energy, Shame we cant do it here | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
"Remember at school learning how great hydro electric power was? You know turbines at the bottom of waterfalls? Well we have no end of tower blocks. How about piping water to the top of them and putting a turbine in the carpark below? Discuss... It would take just as much energy to pump it up there than you'd get back from the turbine at the bottom so no point
Well that's that discussion sorted
I really dont like it when someone ends there post with discuss
Most of us are intelligent adults not primary school children
Post something intelligent then?
Ok back in the great depression of the 1920s in order to create meaningful employment to folk in New Zealand, a program of building hydro electric plants was commissioned which was funded by the government ,which is one of the reasons that NZ are pretty much self reliant for energy,
Shame we cant do it here "The fossil fuels industry that provides funding to the conservatives will never let that happen. Cheap energy from renewable sources will provide no profit for them. | |||
| Reply privately | Reply in forum | Reply +quote |
| Post new Message to Thread |
| back to top |  |
