I won't be able to attend a Permies onsite event any time soon, so I'm dependent on obtaining the skills and knowledge second hand. YouTube is a good source of information, but I trust the Permies info a lot more than random folks posting to YouTube. Movies coming out of the annual Jamborees will be a very helpful resource for the future.
My big push for projects this year on the farm will be
water security and hydrating my fields. I've talked elsewhere about swales, terraces and plantings we are doing to slow and sink rainwater and runoff, but I'm very interested this year to try to take advantage of both water and power from a seasonal stream that runs on one side of our property. Hence my wishlist for the technology
jamboree, would be technology to construct low cost, easy to build, hydro generation - and all the possible uses stemming from that.
There is water I could harvest seasonally from a creek that has low to zero flow during the summer but pretty good flow in Spring up until about mid June. Harvesting the water itself during that timeframe is not all that helpful as we usually get
enough rain in the spring that supplementation at that time of the year is not needed. Instead, I'd like to harness that water flow for power. That could include supplying power to the farmhouse or to the shop, but the cabling runs required would be expensive. Another option is to use that power to charge batteries to be used elsewhere. We could possibly convert an ATV to battery power, etc. I'm sure there are many other projects that could be spawned on the back of a small hydro plant.
The stream I'm talking about is very typical of streams in the North Rockies - so coming up with a system that would work on my stream, could be easily replicated all around my area, and therefore contribute to off grid power resiliency. I've described the stream below, in case anyone else thinks this would be a worthy
project topic to explore.
The stream
From where the water can first be pooled on my property to just before where it spreads out and gets swampy, is about 1600' and the fall over that distance is 100'. The downhill end of that run is about 1700' horizontally and 175' vertically from the nearest point that power could be helpfully used for house or shop. The actual nearest point to the house is 120' horizontally and 80' vertically - but a project at that point of the creek would utilise only 10-15' of fall. To use that hydro power at the shop would entail running cable around 150' horizontally and vertically 110' vertically, but could utilise 25-30' of fall at the stream.
The stream itself is sharply v-shaped. Putting in a shallow dam of railway ties to create a pool to
feed piping to the hydro generator is very do-able. Trying to create a dam tall enough and substantial enough to back up and store a useful volume of water is not feasible, would be more expense than I would want to incur, would entail a significant permitting process and would create unacceptable (to me) risks downstream. Hence not looking in that direction. The numbers cited are all estimates. One goal for this summer is to get proper distance and fall measurements and flow rates and duration - even if the hydro power itself doesn't materialise this year.
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