# Producing Our Own Electricity



## dennisjp (Mar 3, 2006)

There has been some questions from other people as well as myself about building your own power plant. 

The little knowledge I have is mainly in the Micro-hydro systems, but they all share the same basic desire. To produce our own power.

I already see that as much as have studied the subject, there are others that know the parts I didn't worry about learning as much as I did other areas.

I would like to purchase land together with other people so we can buy a larger tract of land together, and this is what has leed to this thread. I think the two subjects can go hand in hand, but at the same time, they are totally seperate for some of the people involved, so I thought it would be better to start a seperate thread on this subject. 

From some of the coments and Pm's I gather some people are completely lost when it comes to producing your own power as I am when it comes to putting the generating system together. 
Don't get me wrong. I am not completly lost, but there are still several things that I need to learn about before I could complete a working unit.

There fore, I have decided to start this thread with what I do know, Starting with a material list for a water wheel to produce electricity, and attemp to explain how it would work.

The first thing is you need a creek that has enough water flow and the amount of head you have. 

"Head" is the difference of height, of where the water would enter a pipe and where it exits it, in feet.

Flow is the amount of water you can saddle into a pipe to use for the power sourse. Water is measured by four different units when it come to hydro power. Gallons per minute,(GPM) gallons per second,(GPS) cubic feet per minute,(CFM) and cubic feet per second (CFS).

If you have to measure it by GPM, "YOU WILL NOT MAKE A LOT OF ELECTRICITY" Maybe enough to feel the needs of a homestead, if you pinch it everywhere you can. 

I you measure buy the CFM would be about 7.48 times as good because there are 7.48 gallons Cubic feet 
Any time you go to gps or better, you have enough power for atleast one home. 
You can go with a turbine, which is a small unit compared to a water wheel, and a lot easier to set up, but I believe a water wheel will make more power than a turebine will. 
There is a difference of oppinion on that subject, but I have numbers that math proffesors have told me was right and they say a water wheel will produce more power, but I don't want to get into a snapping match about this. 
I have compared what a water wheel will produce compared to a known turbine site and I won with over two times the juice. That is only math, however. But they say math proves everything. In this case, it does in my book. 

Ok, I will come back and answer questions I can and I hope some of you will throw your two cents in also. So here is my recipie for a water wheel and cost sheets.

Actually I am scared it will be too long, so I am going to post this and then start the second post.

God Bless
Dennis
A turbine will produce enough electricity for a home, given the 
"two must haves"
Flow and head.

If you only have a small creek, but have a large head, you can make it work, and vise versa.


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## Old Vet (Oct 15, 2006)

Maby you are looking at this wrong. You don't need a lot of water to turn a water wheel. Then you can use gears to make it turn a generator. The HP that one of the water wheels can have is tremondus.


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## dennisjp (Mar 3, 2006)

My recipie for a 24' water wheel is as follows.

One dump truck load of quarry rock, for the pillars. $ 165.00
That is unless you can take them out of the creak bed,
which is very likely.
One ton of sand, which you may be able to drag up from $ 60.00 
the bed also.
15 bags of Porland cement $ 94.30
_______
$ 319.30 
This is not added into the cost of the water wheel itself but should be added to the total cost. I didn't add this because every one has there own ideas and some may want to lay brick, or even build it from timbers as they used to do. 

1- 3" x 48" pc. of round coldroll barstock $ 75.00
Used as an axle.
2 - 3" Pillar block bearings. $ 85.80 Plus S&H
1 - pc 6" x 24" schedule 40 pipe for enter hub. $ 15.00
This pipe is 5/16" thick. 
1 - 4' x 8' x 3/16 pc. of plate metal to be used as part $ 159.25
of the rim for the inside or the wheel.
1 - pc. 4' x 24" long schedule 40 pipe to be the $ 120.00
outside of the hub. 
75 pcs. 1/2" EMT electrical conduit , for the spokes $ 179.25
7 pcs 16 gauge x 4' x 8' sheet metal for the rim, $ 364.00
_________
Total cost $ 998.30 
Tax in Va. 4.5 % 44.93
________
$ 1,043.22 
The cost has went up way more than I had thought they had over the last two years, and it isn't as cheap as I thought it would be, but for something that will make 20 or more horsepower 24/7, I don't see it as a bad investment. 

It is not a bulky, hard to turn machine and it doesn't need a lot of gearing as the turbine people would want you to believe, and it isn't that hard to build, if you learn how to weld at all. 

At the same time, welding with a 3/32 7014 welding rod using a DC welder isn't hard to learn either. 

I am looking forward to many post on this subject. 

God Bless
Dennis


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## dennisjp (Mar 3, 2006)

Old Vet said:


> Maby you are looking at this wrong. You don't need a lot of water to turn a water wheel. Then you can use gears to make it turn a generator. The HP that one of the water wheels can have is tremondus.


Thank you for saying that. It seems to be a hard point to get across nowadays.
I don't think anyone realizes how tremodus an amount of power a wheel can make. Especially if you have a good amount of fall and a fair amount of water.
What I am talking about is useing the outside rim of the wheel for a huge pulley, to get the gearing up, with out having to go through a lot of other gears. 
A 24 foot wheel going to a 6" pulley already has a 48 to 1 ratio.
Say an 18" pulley from the main shaft to a 2" pulley on the alternator, that is 
432 RPM's x 12 RPM's of the wheel makes 5184 RPM's at the alternator. 
That will run any generator or alternator.


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## dennisjp (Mar 3, 2006)

Isn't there any one out there that is interested in producing thier own electricity?????? 
I thought sure there would be some interest on this thread.


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## AngieM2 (May 10, 2002)

Dennis -
I "talked" with Ross of Alt Energy, and he said it might be good to copy this thread over there cause you probably would get more responses there.

Would you like it copied to Alt Energy? It can stay here also.

Angie


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## dennisjp (Mar 3, 2006)

Sure, I hadn't seen that section.
Thanks
Dennis


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## Jim-mi (May 15, 2002)

One of the reasons for little response is that there is darn few people that have the "right" kind of site for water power. Wish that I had such a site........but I don't.
Therefore very few folks are in the know about water power.

Of the systems I have installed only one had a "nice" stream going close by the house. Yet he decided on wind and PV. ....And that was/is a 10k Bergey and 2.5k of PV....!!
That person found that there were a whole lot of issues involved with putting anything into the srteam running through his property.

Now if you wanna talk wind and PV....have at it.
And yes my place is powered by wind and PV.


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## Allan Mistler (Jun 1, 2004)

Dennis,
I'm assembling an under-shot water wheel for my stream right now. This summer I put in the footings which consisted of about two tons of concrete shaped to allow a 40" diameter wheel to be mounted between the support walls and the sluice is rounded at a radius of about 21" such that the wheel clears it by 1 inch or so. I just received the 1.5" pillow block bearings from Northern Tool and have yet to purchase the 1.5" cold rolled axle shaft, so it will be a while before I can tell you how well it works. This is a picture from a reference article which I could no longer find on the web...








(fortunately I saved the article on my computer) 
The wheel itself consists of two 40" diameter round wooden ends from an industrial wire spool. I cut several 24" lengths of 1 foot dia PVC in half lengthwise, and after routering arc-shaped slots into the edges of the wooden slabs, placed the PVC vanes into the slots and bound the two sides together with several pieces of 3/8 threaded rod. All told, the water wheel has nine vanes at two feet of length and 1 foot deep equally spaced around the hubs. I have a surplus permanent magnet DC motor from my days in the computer tape drive industry which will produce (if my math is near correct) approximately 200 watts/Hr at my average stream flow. Though this may not seem like much, you must realize that it will produce 24/7 which means an extra 4.8 kilowatts each day to subsidize my solar system!
As soon as I get it mounted, I'll place some pictures on here and keep you informed of challenges I face as I fine tune the resource.


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## ET1 SS (Oct 22, 2005)

Allan Mistler - very nice.


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## Allan Mistler (Jun 1, 2004)

OK.... This past weekend I managed to get the water wheel in its mount and do some testing on the potential output power. The head is only about two feet, but the amount of torque at the radius of 20" is well over 25 pounds at even minimal water flow (I use a spring scale to see how hard it pulls to stop). Based upon the formula I found, I only need 25 pounds at the measured speed of 25 RPM to produce 200 Watts!
















After initially mounting the motor/generator coupled with a 1" spur gear to the 14" drive gear (A 14" diameter Chevrolet transmission flex gear - seen in photo) the Generator RPM was about 360 and it produced 12.5 volts. There was no point in measuring the current since this was too low a voltage and even shorting out the generator didn't stop the wheel, though it did slow it down to a crawl! Anyway, after researching the tape drive motor that I'm using as a generator, I'm putting together an additional 2.5 to 1 gear box to increase (using bicycle sprockets and chain) the speed to about 1,000 RPM. This should produce the necessary voltage and current to feed to my batteries for a nice, continuous charge twenty-four-seven.
















It blends in nicely with the homestead decor wouldn't you say?
The constant beat of water on the paddles is incredibly soothing.


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

i like it. a flywheel (flex gear) was my first choice if/when i get my overshot repaired.


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## SolarGary (Sep 8, 2005)

Alan -- nice job!!
Please let us know how the new gearing turns out.

Gary


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## mightybooboo (Feb 10, 2004)

OUTSTANDING!

BooBoo


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## seedspreader (Oct 18, 2004)

Alan, that's EXCELLENT. You are my new hero!


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## 12vman (Feb 17, 2004)

Very Nice!! Thanks for the pics! Keep us updated on your progress..


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## mightybooboo (Feb 10, 2004)

200 watts 24/ 7,seems to me youve solved your power generation needs.
That is just a flat out beautiful wheel Alan.

Question,how is the axle connected?
Did you do any wood treatment?

BooBoo


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## Allan Mistler (Jun 1, 2004)

BooBoo, The axle is connected to the wheel through that round disk shaped steel plate (which was once part of a satellite dish radial support frame) and the other one on the other side of the wheel. They are welded to 10" lengths of 1.5" plumbing pipe, sleeved with 1.5" type L copper pipe (all this to get to the right dimension for the axle!!) and secured to the axle with set screws. The 24 or so hex-head screws seen in the photo secure the plate to the wheel. The axle shaft is mounted in two pillow block bearings which are anchored to the concrete with 5/8" x 6" stainless anchors.
The wood and actually the entire assembled unit was painted with fibreglass resin and allowed to dry all summer (since I got the hardener to resin ratio wrong).


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## rambler (Jan 20, 2004)

dennisjp said:


> The first thing is you need a creek that has enough water flow and the amount of head you have.



Wouldn't the first thing you need is a big pile of paper from the govt allowing you to do this? Moving water in the USA is governed by the Feds, and every single office of govt below it down to the township board, & each one seems to love to have meetings & regulations on moving water issues......

Sigh.

Second you nee a dependable stream of water and a location that offers you enough head. Those can be hard to find. Small streams tend to dry up. Bigger ones you run into flooding issues. In either case, the govt will get ticked if you alter anything.

That rather small unit pictured maybe you can get by with it looking like a decorative thing, but a power plant of any size is going to draw some attention, just hard to hide. And you would need a little more size to power several families?

Neat topic, & neat pics of the one in this thread. I'm interested in water power. I don't have much to add.


--->Paul


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