Shawn Ces

I’m a little late to the party here but I just wanted to chime in. I have roughly the same measurements you have. 300-500+ gpm and 60 ft of head. I have two custom turbines made by Spencer Langston and I can produce right at 1.5 kw continuous. So, from reading your posts, that would certainly cover your needs.  You can check out my system build under “ new guy with hydro project” I would just leave a k7n but not sure how.
As far as the pipe I highly suggest looking on Facebook marketplace. I found 1,000ft of 8” schedule 80 pvc for 5k . It was a bear to work with and bury but it was what I needed and it worked great. Please update us on your progress

Jon Los wrote:

As someone who als o has a creek flowing through my property, I just went ahead and did it. It's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission!
!

John , I would love to hear more about your hydro system

I have 20 solar panels ( 5 kw ) and I have 20 more ordered. I also have a micro hydro system that produces around 1.5kw continuous depending on the flow. These charge 6 LifePo4 batteries which power my house.

Hello Dusty,
I recently installed my hydro system( see guy with new hydro project ) although you don’t mention any measurements I think maybe before you do anything you should see what your measurements are. If you have any head ( drop) at all in a creek that size you would most likely be much better off doing what Thomas said and use a turgo or peloton turbine.
There are plenty of websites and even YouTube videos that will show you how to get your measurements. Let us know what you come up with

So I haven’t posted my progress in a while so I thought I’d update you guys.
So, I FINALLY got the leaks fixed which was difficult and to be honest a bit expensive . But I finally got the hydro online last week. I still have some issues with turbulent water entering the penstock at the Coanda box. I was losing all kinds of power from it during the night. But after building a baffle out of a piece of 8” pvc pipe to calm the water after it enters the Coanda box it seems to be working much better. I can make around 1.8 kw continuous depending on the flow of the creek. I couldn’t be happier with that. I combine that constant power with my 5kw solar array and my batteries are usually well charged.

As of right now I don’t have a few of my bigger loads on the critical load panel ( alt energy panel ) the hot water heater and the wife’s hot tub are two big ones. I am planning on buying another Schneider inverter and solar charger to add those loads and be completely grid free.
If anyone has any questions or advice please chime in.

I finally got my turbines set today. Digging the tailrace was a total bear due to the huge rocks. The rocks also dictated how I situated my powerhouse floor. So, the penstock doesn’t line up perfectly to the rear of the powerhouse wall, or future wall, but I made it work

Steve Zoma wrote:

Shawn Ces wrote:It sounds awesome ! What kind of power does it make?
Got any pics ?

It is medium sized so it only makes around 15 megawatts using both turbines. If the river is right with the head pond high, and the tailrace low, we can pull another 1.5 megawatts out of each jenny, but the shafts cannot take the load. That is using around 2200 cubic feet per second. Naturally there is a 6% CFS loss for the fish escape.

It's a little misleading because all powerplants have their output based on a yearly average, so we are less than 100,000 megawatts per year. It's still roughly 10,000 homes it powers though.

Holy Hell !!! That isn’t “ micro “ hydro, that’s just a straight up hydro power plant !!! That is some serious power!

It sounds awesome ! What kind of power does it make?
Got any pics ?

Steve Zoma wrote:

Shawn Ces wrote:

Steve Zoma wrote:Ha ha: I’m not sure you would. I say that teasingly because it’s a modern design, and looks good on paper, but a terrible set .

What are you’re measurements? Penstock size? Etc?

Its a medium sized hydro-set up.

30 feet of head, but with the venturi-effect getting a pretty decent pressure differential. With variable pitch Kaplan turbines not getting a lot of cavitation which is good.

The first has been pretty flawless, but we got the second jenny set yesterday... what a pain that has been... but should get everything buttoned up today and hope to let water flow tomorrow. We'll see.

We are at flood stage here, so backwater is impeding power production. Getting that second jenny online will help off-set that and help stir more electrons.

Steve Zoma wrote:Ha ha: I’m not sure you would. I say that teasingly because it’s a modern design, and looks good on paper, but a terrible set .

What are you’re measurements? Penstock size? Etc?

Steve Zoma wrote:

Shawn Ces wrote:Even once I get it buried there is about 30 ft. total that won’t be buried. I figure if I keep it running it should be ok

Maybe. Moving water does freeze.

There is a phenomenon known as Frazil Ice that can be a huge problem with some hydro set-ups. It's basically where there is supercool water in a turbulent environment, and the frazil ice sticks to man-made materials like steel, concrete and plastic to the point where it clogs the system.

On our set up, this invades the intakes and can be very problematic because there is no good cure. A Bubbler System would only make the problem worse, raking the intakes only mixes the supercooled water that much more, and there is no real good way to heat moving water in high volumes. Really the only cure we have found, is to let the sun warm the turbulent surface and reestablish the layering in the headpond. Naturally this is extremely frustrating and time consuming, and is not unique to our set-up.

This may not be an issue you have, but Frazil Ice is a strange phenomenon and is worth researching only because it can be a real challenge to winter hydro set-ups.

Steve, I would love to hear about your hydro set up