I have a river running past the front of my house.


River Urie

It's fairly fast flowing, I have often wondered how the use the river to generate power.
I came across these websites below. The concept looks perfect. I have never seen one in use though.

Has anybody done anything similar? I am sure it can't be too difficult to make one of these.


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[Edited on 16/5/09 by Slater]

May be a hazard to navigation

I note that your river has regular boat traffic.......

I love the idea - my parents have a river at the end of their garden and have often thought of how much power could be pulled out but......being the UK, I think you have to get authority from the Rivers agency before legally doing anything, which probably costs £X00000 as they will need to survey the river 10 times from source to exit to confirm your 'fits in the back of your car' turbine won't cause non-reversible damage to the river system

You will probably find you don't have the rights to tap the river for power or water.

Friends family own an old mill - they have the rights to tap the water in the deads. They looked at it 20 years ago but decided the cost (back then) wasn't worth it.

thats a very big water wheel, for very little power!

Would you get away with damning it, just a weir to raise it a foot or so? Then a pipe with a nozzle and a home made device to generate from.

You can buy an 850w generator for £40, and use the innards from it.

Certainly if you want to use water to power a water mill you have to pay for the privelage. There's probably also rules about access using the river and if you put a turbine across it there'd be an issue....

There's no way you'll be allowed to do that!

I think it would constitute Renewable energy, give off no CO2, and be environmentally friendly.

That must be illegal

200 watts is very little power......i dont think the project would be worth it......approx lighting power for three rooms in your house. Maybe if you spent a couple of grand on li battries, and a couple of grand on dc to ac invertor, and just use the 200 watts to charge batteries

Mate of mine has a neighbour who wanted to do that very thing.

He got SEPA up to check it over and the bloke agreed to grant the permit at a cost of a grand or so.

Then came the killer.

You must also get a permit to discharge the water back into the river as it's now industrial waste...

That cost another £500 for the permit.

£1,500 in permits to take out some spare kinetic energy from some running water.

What about taking heat out of it?
Does it freeze in winter? Air/water heat pumps for domestic central heating are getting common, and work down to -20 deg C, so water at just above freezing should be fine, plus you don't need to worry about discharge back into the river, just a heat exchange sunk into it.

You will just end up with a load of chopped up trout!