The biggest challenge in operating our water and hydroelectric system in the beginning was maintenance. As the years wore on, the system needed more and more arcane repairs. I learned to carve generator brushes to fit our obsolete generator and fun stuff like that. It was all interesting work with old school technology, but I knew that a system with one moving part was possible.
It was remarkably easy to in our case. We got ambitious and combined this
project with delivering winter water to the cabin for the first time since it was built in 1906.
I traded for most of the parts of the new system and still spent thousands of dollars on the system at the machine shop and on the electronic load controller. Our neighbour had invented an ingenious load controller based on a voltage sensitive relay, but when the system moved from hundreds of watts to thousands of watts, better controls were required.
All money super well spent. We saved money by doing things with the "free" electricity that we used to do with propane, like boiling tea water. In the winter, the full output of the system went into space heating and substantially reduced our use of
firewood.
The anthology, Serious Microhydro: Water Power Solutions from the Experts has case studies with some similar characteristics to yours. The hydro worked so well that the woman wrote a song celebrating the return of the hydro resource after the summer drought. People are happy with their microhydro systems it seems, no matter what size they are. Smaller output systems might not be as expensive or as difficult as more powerfui ones, and that's probably good.
Every site has so many unique elements that only an anthology can cover the range of possibilities. No one site is typical.
Another important fact when describing an existing system is the size of the pipe. What size is yours? Also, how much water do you have available?
More later,
Scotty
