Saying hello / introduction/ ? RE: Hydro power

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Time2go,
I am not trying to degrade your ideas. I think it would be great but you have to realize that you may hold the deed to the property but there are limits to what you can do. Those restrictions are there to protect the rights of others that may be affected by your actions. They won't kill you but they can and will put you in jail and take your property. The legal system has all the tools it needs.
If you are really serious then talk to a lawyer. See what a real estate attorney can do to help you. You can't get far enough from people to do what ever you want without consequences. Structures have to meet minimum codes and you have to have no severe effects on your neighbors.

I know you're not SheepDog. Everything you have said is true. I don't have issues with truth. It is what it is. lol.

Addressing some of your post, yes.... I am aware of, and generally agree with "real" environmental issues. I understand I cannot just buy the property and build a damn and start charging everyone below me for electricity. Nor can I dump 400 gallons of 100% arsenic in the creek per day either........

So to your point, from what I have read so far about TN water laws --- I came to the conclusion that I do in fact have access to and can use the water any way I see fit AS LONG AS > it falls under "reasonable" use.

Now to me , that translates to > If just me and my wife are living on the land, and I'm BARELY generating enough electric to provide for our needs ---- while simultaneously NOT harming the "stream" - that is reasonable use.

If I build a hydro station capable of providing power to 20 homes....... yeah, that'd be a problem.

But yes, you are correct - ish. There's always a grey area. What I mean by that is you spoke of codes. My father builds houses so I am aware.

But then we start to venture off into grey areas. Why are those codes there? Is it a "dwelling" < big key word............

Now the state might say - Well........ technically you could build a smaller structure than what we require in the state to consider a "dwelling"...... and technically, yes, I suppose you could live there ----- we won't like it ----- but we can't really stop you either.

HOWEVER: Upon the sale of the "property" - *I* would not legally be allowed to say or advertise that the property has a "home." The state would not recognize it as a dwelling in other words.

If that is the case: Deal. Cause I'm never gonna sell this property. Over my dead body. Lol.
My point is, I had an inspector tell me one time that people try to do this all the time but ....... to his knowledge, only a few had the mental capacity to understand > Buy an RV. On wheels. It's a "vehicle" , not a dwelling..........and ergo......we can't do a damn thing about it.

There's always grey areas. Cracks / work arounds. Unfortunately the outside world and it's system makes it very difficult to break away from their system........

I wonder why that is? Freedom. God knows we can't have that. lol.
 
Welcome from Eastern Missouri. Good to have you with us. Sounds like you have a good start. I hope it all works out.
 
Welcome from Eastern Missouri. Good to have you with us. Sounds like you have a good start. I hope it all works out.

Well, SheedDog is giving me hard math < no way around hard math > < or easy math for that matter > ----- sometimes that really pisses me off. But, whattya' gonna do? lol. The math is the math.

And he's truthfully telling me all the BS I'll have to go through - probably - in order to do what I want to do. Like I said and he is saying without saying it - they make it very hard for you to break away from "their" system.

Human beings at this very moment in time, armed only with a smartphone, have more knowledge at their fingertips than we (collectively) probably ought to have. That's just my opinion. My point is > Setting up a hydro generator ain't exactly rocket science now 100+ years on.......

The common folk are very capable of understanding the math and building their own way out of the ready made system. A system I am largely rejecting as I age....

The problem now days is "Agencies" like SheepDog is talking about. EPA, Local Codes, State Codes.....

My take on it is > I have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Dealing with all the BS and "getting permission" from some government agency is an automatic kiss my ass situation. So, I'll have to skirt, dodge, hide, bend, the rules.

I've even looked out of country.
 
Here in Oregon the state government claims they own all the water, when I built my gravity feed system I tried getting water rights to a seasonal stream that passed about 20' from my spring source, they told me all water had to go Cow Creek from streams like this one, which by my design would do exactly that, all I wanted to do is to put in a long pipe from near my spring down to a small Pelton wheel to run a small DC generator, the outlet water would return to the stream which actually go through a culvert under my driveway. No big deal, but they said no, crazy because this stream only runs when there has been a lot of rain or after a lot of snow melt at the top of the mountain behind us. I wasn't too upset considering that this stream does not flow all that much to begin with but I've heard of people having to remove ponds because they did not have a license to have them. My personnel feeling is that it's God that owns the water and we're just blessed to be able to use it. If you have a high volume water source with good elevation to run a generator, you really shouldn't have a problem getting a permit to use it, more than likely fish would not be on a high elevation source and the water would return to the main stream that it originally flowed into, there a lot like that here in southern Oregon.
 
Loo
Here in Oregon the state government claims they own all the water, when I built my gravity feed system I tried getting water rights to a seasonal stream that passed about 20' from my spring source, they told me all water had to go Cow Creek from streams like this one, which by my design would do exactly that, all I wanted to do is to put in a long pipe from near my spring down to a small Pelton wheel to run a small DC generator, the outlet water would return to the stream which actually go through a culvert under my driveway. No big deal, but they said no, crazy because this stream only runs when there has been a lot of rain or after a lot of snow melt at the top of the mountain behind us. I wasn't too upset considering that this stream does not flow all that much to begin with but I've heard of people having to remove ponds because they did not have a license to have them. My personnel feeling is that it's God that owns the water and we're just blessed to be able to use it. If you have a high volume water source with good elevation to run a generator, you really shouldn't have a problem getting a permit to use it, more than likely fish would not be on a high elevation source and the water would return to the main stream that it originally flowed into, there a lot like that here in southern Oregon.
I would have never even asked...
 
Here in Oregon the state government claims they own all the water, when I built my gravity feed system I tried getting water rights to a seasonal stream that passed about 20' from my spring source, they told me all water had to go Cow Creek from streams like this one, which by my design would do exactly that, all I wanted to do is to put in a long pipe from near my spring down to a small Pelton wheel to run a small DC generator, the outlet water would return to the stream which actually go through a culvert under my driveway. No big deal, but they said no, crazy because this stream only runs when there has been a lot of rain or after a lot of snow melt at the top of the mountain behind us. I wasn't too upset considering that this stream does not flow all that much to begin with but I've heard of people having to remove ponds because they did not have a license to have them. My personnel feeling is that it's God that owns the water and we're just blessed to be able to use it. If you have a high volume water source with good elevation to run a generator, you really shouldn't have a problem getting a permit to use it, more than likely fish would not be on a high elevation source and the water would return to the main stream that it originally flowed into, there a lot like that here in southern Oregon.

So, it seems to me your mistake was "asking." --- I have no intentions of "asking" permission for anything. I don't need it.

Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. I'd be on my land, living my life, and what makes me happy is being self sufficient.

That's a 3 prong checkmate that the "state" has ZERO argument over unless somebody just rolls over and plays by their rules.

I have no intentions of playing by their rules. At all. None. Zip. *** them.
 
I honestly hope you get away with your plans Time2Go.
I have similar though a bit different plan for my new home. While there are things like mandatory facilities for homes there are some ways around those as long as they are "engineered" and signed off on by an engineer. Starting with the home I will build and ending with a water treatment plant. Everything will have to be signed off on by at least an engineer and there is some wiggle room for the county to get involved. The county doesn't like to fight in court with engineers. As long as there is no code against it then it can be done.
I wish you the best and caution you to act "ignorant" if caught. Each inspector is king of his little piece of the pie so belligerence is the wrong way to go. Asking for the inspectors help as to how to handle it may make life easier and get you what you need.
 
Loo

I would have never even asked...
That did become an afterthought, thing is over the years the flow of water on this creek has become less and less, drought has gotten worse over the years and any power generated by the stream would not have paid for itself.
 
Our colleague Sheepdog makes some excellent points. To get enough power (Watts) you need to (1) figure how much power (or energy, measured in Watt-hours) then determine your creek's flow (measured in cubic meters/second) and head (measured in meters). You would use the formula

P = m x g x Hnet x η
where
P = power, measured in Watts (W).
m = mass flow rate in kg/s (numerically the same as the flow rate in litres/second because 1 litre of water weighs 1 kg)
g = the gravitational constant, which is 9.81m/sec/sec
H net = the net head. This is the gross head physically measured at the site, less any head losses. To keep things simple head losses can be assumed to be 10%,
η = component losses

So let's say you have a stream whose flow you measure to be 500 liters/second (I'll show you how it's measured in a bit); and the water drops 4 meters; that is, from the point where it enters your intake screen to where the water discharges from the turbine and returns to the creek.

So to get your theoretical power, you would measure the flow times the head distance, times the gravitational constant, or
P = 500 X 4 X 9.81 or 19.62 kW, or about enough to supply your house and those of four or five of your friends for anything a suburban house would ever need.
Cool, huh?
Well, no.

The "theoretical number" assumes you'd get the entire creek to run through your pipe, and each of the components would not have any losses, or inefficiencies. If you have an intake pipe 12 inches in diameter, that means only about 113 square inches, which is likely only about one percent of the cross-section of the river. So that means your flow rate will be 5 liters per second, which drops your power rate down to 196 watts, and when you knock off about 25% of that for component
inefficiencies, you have about 150 watts of usable power.

Now, unlike photovoltaics, your hydro-produced power will be generating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (unless the creek dries up). So, if you're not going to use it all the time (which you aren't), you can store some of that unused electricity in lead acid batteries and will be a lot more efficient, but then you have to buy the lead acid batteries and probably replace them every five or six years, and build stands for them, wire them, install diodes to make sure that your electricity goes where you want it to go, and so on. and, of course we haven't incorporated the costs of buying and installing the turbine system, either.

Here's a suggestion: Back in the 1980's, I was a system engineer for a PV house in Phoenix, Arizona and did sizing for PV, microhydro, and hybrid systems. If you'd like some help in defining your projected loads, and a quick-'n'-dirty feasibility study, I'd be glad to help. If you like, email me at [email protected] and maybe we can figure stuff out together!

Meanwhile, welcome!!
 
Our colleague Sheepdog makes some excellent points. To get enough power (Watts) you need to (1) figure how much power (or energy, measured in Watt-hours) then determine your creek's flow (measured in cubic meters/second) and head (measured in meters). You would use the formula

P = m x g x Hnet x η
where
P = power, measured in Watts (W).
m = mass flow rate in kg/s (numerically the same as the flow rate in litres/second because 1 litre of water weighs 1 kg)
g = the gravitational constant, which is 9.81m/sec/sec
H net = the net head. This is the gross head physically measured at the site, less any head losses. To keep things simple head losses can be assumed to be 10%,
η = component losses

So let's say you have a stream whose flow you measure to be 500 liters/second (I'll show you how it's measured in a bit); and the water drops 4 meters; that is, from the point where it enters your intake screen to where the water discharges from the turbine and returns to the creek.

So to get your theoretical power, you would measure the flow times the head distance, times the gravitational constant, or
P = 500 X 4 X 9.81 or 19.62 kW, or about enough to supply your house and those of four or five of your friends for anything a suburban house would ever need.
Cool, huh?
Well, no.

The "theoretical number" assumes you'd get the entire creek to run through your pipe, and each of the components would not have any losses, or inefficiencies. If you have an intake pipe 12 inches in diameter, that means only about 113 square inches, which is likely only about one percent of the cross-section of the river. So that means your flow rate will be 5 liters per second, which drops your power rate down to 196 watts, and when you knock off about 25% of that for component
inefficiencies, you have about 150 watts of usable power.

Now, unlike photovoltaics, your hydro-produced power will be generating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (unless the creek dries up). So, if you're not going to use it all the time (which you aren't), you can store some of that unused electricity in lead acid batteries and will be a lot more efficient, but then you have to buy the lead acid batteries and probably replace them every five or six years, and build stands for them, wire them, install diodes to make sure that your electricity goes where you want it to go, and so on. and, of course we haven't incorporated the costs of buying and installing the turbine system, either.

Here's a suggestion: Back in the 1980's, I was a system engineer for a PV house in Phoenix, Arizona and did sizing for PV, microhydro, and hybrid systems. If you'd like some help in defining your projected loads, and a quick-'n'-dirty feasibility study, I'd be glad to help. If you like, email me at [email protected] and maybe we can figure stuff out together!

Meanwhile, welcome!!

Thank you. I would like that. I will send an email now.
 
First, Welcome...

Second, wouldn't wind be quite a bit simpler, cheaper, and easier to accomplish? I'm not sure about the amount of wind in Tennessee, but it probably blows enough to run a simple two blade generator most of the time. Wind might not give you all the power you need, but wind + solar should come close.

For water - assuming your water is good to drink without chemical treatment, have you looked into a ram pump? Needs no electricity and uses to water itself to pump water uphill. Put a holding tank inside your house at a higher level than any faucet, and you've got running water. The pressure may not be what you're used to, and ram pumps aren't terribly efficient so your tank can take quite a while to refill if you draw it down. But it's a viable system. If it's naturally potable water, you're good to go. Otherwise you can treat as needed for potability, and use untreated for bathing, waste, etc.
 
For water - assuming your water is good to drink without chemical treatment, have you looked into a ram pump? Needs no electricity and uses to water itself to pump water uphill. Put a holding tank inside your house at a higher level than any faucet, and you've got running water. The pressure may not be what you're used to, and ram pumps aren't terribly efficient so your tank can take quite a while to refill if you draw it down. But it's a viable system. If it's naturally potable water, you're good to go. Otherwise you can treat as needed for potability, and use untreated for bathing, waste, etc.
Not many people know about ram pumps.
The first one I ran across, I asked the guy: "what's that thump-thump-thump under our feet?" .
That's the water pump that supplies water to the house. It uses no electricity and runs 24/7.
We have 50 psi water pressure forever.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_ram
They have been running since 1800 and still continue to run in Europe:
Wikipedia said:
Some of their installations still survived as of 2004, one such example being at the hamlet of Toller Whelme, in Dorset. Until about 1958 when the mains water arrived, the hamlet of East Dundry just south of Bristol had three working rams – their noisy "thump" every minute or so resonated through the valley night and day: these rams served farms that needed much water for their dairy herds.
Free water, pumped up to pressure, no external power required. :thumbs:
Wikipedia said:
The hydraulic ram is sometimes used in remote areas, where there is both a source of low-head hydropower and a need for pumping water to a destination higher in elevation than the source. In this situation, the ram is often useful, since it requires no outside source of power other than the kinetic energy of flowing water... A traditional hydraulic ram has only two moving parts, a spring or weight loaded "waste" valve sometimes known as the "clack" valve and a "delivery" check valve, making it cheap to build, easy to maintain, and very reliable.
 
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The biggest drawback is that ram pumps only lift a portion of the water that flows through them. The rest should be returned to the source or it is just wasted. The pump has to be placed down hill from the source so if you are using a lake or a spring you have to let the waste water flow back into a stream. (or build one)
 
The biggest drawback is that ram pumps only lift a portion of the water that flows through them. The rest should be returned to the source or it is just wasted. The pump has to be placed down hill from the source so if you are using a lake or a spring you have to let the waste water flow back into a stream. (or build one)
The farm I grew up on had one. It wasn't used any more but still there. The well was a flow well. The water ran downhill, underground, to a pit housing the ram. The excess water then flowed further downhill and the pipe came up out of the ground and emptied into a cattle tank. The cattle had fresh water year round. The cattle tank overflow continued downhill on the surface and ran into a fish pond.
 
I must observe that SheepDog contributions to the thread are top-class (coming from a physicist/engineer).

This link should take you too a play-list on YouTube to a guy in England that has his own hydro-electric that he uses to power his off-grid place.



You may want to view those videos to get an idea what e had to do, size of pipes, turbine, and how much power he gets when the water flow is good.

What you are looking for is to harness the work done by the water as it drops and convert that into electric power that you can use, AND then transport that energy to where you want to use it. Depending how far the turbine/water-wheel is from where you will use it can make a big difference. The fly-in-the ointment of DC is that real world wires have resistance and means losses when transporting the energy. The energy loss through a resistance is defined as;

P=I^2R

Where;
P = Power Loss
I = Current in amps
R = resistance in Ohms.

The power in a DC circuit is ;

P=IE

Where ;

P = power in watts
I = Current in amps
E= Voltage in volts.

Since DC power systems use a fixed DC voltage, that does not change after you decide what voltage you are going to use (hint higher voltage better)

So to bump up your Power to your house you will have to bump up the current. Now look back at the equation that defines the power loss through your wire. The current (I^2) enters as a squared value. Double the current, the power loss goes up by a factor of four. Increase the current by a factor of four and you are looking at 16 times the power loss just moving the energy to where it will be used.

That is exactly the reason that power companies use high-voltage AC to transport energy and only when it gets to our neighborhood is the voltage stepped down to 120 AC. I will skip the details of high-voltage AC and transformers and the equations involved (I suspect I have already exceed the legal limit of the number of equations tolerated in a public forum). If you have any distance between the generation and the use, go with AC to transport the energy.

Ben

:peace:Please forgive the following but if I have a chance to use an unusual image, I will,

Breaker.jpg
 
You said Ram Pump!

I built a small one that collected water behind a dam I built across a stream on my property and delivered it to the ram pump down stream from the dam. Worked nice until a big rain came and silted in the dam over-night. I dug it out and a week latter... it was again silted in. Since then I have done some reading and realized I should not have the intake at the bottom of the dam but rather at the overflow of the dam. When I get back around setting up the ram pump, I will most likely be feeding it from springs rather than ground water. That would give me potable water at the top of the hill... bonus.

Ben
 
The biggest drawback is that ram pumps only lift a portion of the water that flows through them. The rest should be returned to the source or it is just wasted. The pump has to be placed down hill from the source so if you are using a lake or a spring you have to let the waste water flow back into a stream. (or build one)
This is correct.
For the one I saw, when it went 'clunk' it pumped only about a cup of water and a gallon went back to the stream.
Since the flow of water was continuous, and unlimited, it wasn't wasted. Just that only a part of it was pumped "for free".
With a 100-foot long iron ram pipe, when the dump valve slammed shut, the hydraulic pressure spike of the weight of that column of water slamming to a halt developed plenty of pressure.
The important part is, as long as the stream is flowing, it is pumping 24/7.
A cup of water every 30 seconds may not seem like much, but do the math.
It's 180 gallons per day.
(show your work!)
24 hours x 60 minutes x 2 (30 seconds) = 2880 cycles per day.
1 cup = 1/16th gallon (.0625 gallon)
2880 x .0625 = 180 gallons.
I could shower, wash clothes, and flush toilets with that :thumbs: .
Do you think I would care if one gallon of water went back into the stream for every cup pumped to the house?
Naa, I'd have plenty of running water for free:woo hoo:.
 
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Another thing about rams is that they do not require a large flow volume. The flow out of the well on our farm 120 years ago, when the ram was put in, was 2.5 to 3 gallons/minute. But as you say, it ran 24/7/365. It fed a tank that held 20-25 gallons in the upstairs of the house. Water then fed to other rooms via gravity. This was a big deal, as the house had two running water sinks and a flush toilet and required no power and no access to any outside water supply - in 1897. That was quite rare for a rural home...
 
First, Welcome...

Second, wouldn't wind be quite a bit simpler, cheaper, and easier to accomplish? I'm not sure about the amount of wind in Tennessee, but it probably blows enough to run a simple two blade generator most of the time. Wind might not give you all the power you need, but wind + solar should come close.

For water - assuming your water is good to drink without chemical treatment, have you looked into a ram pump? Needs no electricity and uses to water itself to pump water uphill. Put a holding tank inside your house at a higher level than any faucet, and you've got running water. The pressure may not be what you're used to, and ram pumps aren't terribly efficient so your tank can take quite a while to refill if you draw it down. But it's a viable system. If it's naturally potable water, you're good to go. Otherwise you can treat as needed for potability, and use untreated for bathing, waste, etc.

Wind in this area is not much better than an occasionl back up, short of certain locations such as gaps between the ridges where any air movement gets funneled. sometimes there is plenty, but just as often there is no wind sometimes for long periods of time.
 
Wind in this area is not much better than an occasionl back up, short of certain locations such as gaps between the ridges where any air movement gets funneled. sometimes there is plenty, but just as often there is no wind sometimes for long periods of time.
My area has the opposite problem. It often blows so hard that wind turbines have to shut down. It is a very rare day if there isn't at least a breeze...
 
I must observe that SheepDog contributions to the thread are top-class (coming from a physicist/engineer).

This link should take you too a play-list on YouTube to a guy in England that has his own hydro-electric that he uses to power his off-grid place.



You may want to view those videos to get an idea what e had to do, size of pipes, turbine, and how much power he gets when the water flow is good.

What you are looking for is to harness the work done by the water as it drops and convert that into electric power that you can use, AND then transport that energy to where you want to use it. Depending how far the turbine/water-wheel is from where you will use it can make a big difference. The fly-in-the ointment of DC is that real world wires have resistance and means losses when transporting the energy. The energy loss through a resistance is defined as;

P=I^2R

Where;
P = Power Loss
I = Current in amps
R = resistance in Ohms.

The power in a DC circuit is ;

P=IE

Where ;

P = power in watts
I = Current in amps
E= Voltage in volts.

Since DC power systems use a fixed DC voltage, that does not change after you decide what voltage you are going to use (hint higher voltage better)

So to bump up your Power to your house you will have to bump up the current. Now look back at the equation that defines the power loss through your wire. The current (I^2) enters as a squared value. Double the current, the power loss goes up by a factor of four. Increase the current by a factor of four and you are looking at 16 times the power loss just moving the energy to where it will be used.

That is exactly the reason that power companies use high-voltage AC to transport energy and only when it gets to our neighborhood is the voltage stepped down to 120 AC. I will skip the details of high-voltage AC and transformers and the equations involved (I suspect I have already exceed the legal limit of the number of equations tolerated in a public forum). If you have any distance between the generation and the use, go with AC to transport the energy.

Ben

:peace:Please forgive the following but if I have a chance to use an unusual image, I will,

View attachment 50168


Hey Ned, tell the story about the pics please. Pretty cool
 
Hey Ned, tell the story about the pics please. Pretty cool
OK but remember YOU asked.

Warning: Old man's rambling story follows.

About 19 years ago I consulted with a team that was automating a gas control system that is used at an ABB facility where they build the giant circuit breakers used at electrical sub-stations. The circuit breakers when put into operation are filled with Sulfur Hexafloride (SF6 a very inert gas) which has an extremely high breakdown voltage and inhibit flash-over occurring inside the breakers due to lightning strikes etc. The tricky part of working with SF6 is that it is considered a nasty greenhouse gas. The government require strict control and accounting for all of the gas to ensure it does get out into the atmosphere.

To comply with regulations ABB built a "gas house" inside the plant that contained all of the valves, storage tanks vacuum pumps etc required to be able to put the gas into the breakers before testing and reclaim it after the testing was completed. The team I consulted with managed to implement automatic control of all of the valves pumps pressure transducers and misc. sensors to share the limited number of resource across the many work areas as required.

Time passed....

The developer left for greener pastures.
The project lead moved to NIST (National Institute of Standard and Testing )

The gentleman that designed the piping and interfaces at ABB announced ti was time for him to retire and replacement realized the control application and hardware were dated and spare parts were getting hard to locate so he asked my company to update the application and the hardware. The tricky part was we only had a three day window over July fourth to complete the update without impacting production ( production is money after all).

Since I had been involved with the original project and still remembered how to spell ABB, I was elected to develop the update plan and define the architecture that would be used by the new version of the application.

All went well until the third of July and an issue was discovered that required I miss a perfectly good digging party my family was having on the Fourth to troubleshot and fix the problem.

The customer was very happy when production started up on schedule and he indulged me when I asked if he would take a picture of me in front of one of the 3=phase breakers. He even suggested I pose for another picture in the test lab where they do the final test to ensure the breakers to do not falsh-over when hit by lightning.

Tesla_Coil.jpg


Well you did ask (smiley-wink)

Ben
 
OK but remember YOU asked.

Warning: Old man's rambling story follows.

About 19 years ago I consulted with a team that was automating a gas control system that is used at an ABB facility where they build the giant circuit breakers used at electrical sub-stations. The circuit breakers when put into operation are filled with Sulfur Hexafloride (SF6 a very inert gas) which has an extremely high breakdown voltage and inhibit flash-over occurring inside the breakers due to lightning strikes etc. The tricky part of working with SF6 is that it is considered a nasty greenhouse gas. The government require strict control and accounting for all of the gas to ensure it does get out into the atmosphere.

To comply with regulations ABB built a "gas house" inside the plant that contained all of the valves, storage tanks vacuum pumps etc required to be able to put the gas into the breakers before testing and reclaim it after the testing was completed. The team I consulted with managed to implement automatic control of all of the valves pumps pressure transducers and misc. sensors to share the limited number of resource across the many work areas as required.

Time passed....

The developer left for greener pastures.
The project lead moved to NIST (National Institute of Standard and Testing )

The gentleman that designed the piping and interfaces at ABB announced ti was time for him to retire and replacement realized the control application and hardware were dated and spare parts were getting hard to locate so he asked my company to update the application and the hardware. The tricky part was we only had a three day window over July fourth to complete the update without impacting production ( production is money after all).

Since I had been involved with the original project and still remembered how to spell ABB, I was elected to develop the update plan and define the architecture that would be used by the new version of the application.

All went well until the third of July and an issue was discovered that required I miss a perfectly good digging party my family was having on the Fourth to troubleshot and fix the problem.

The customer was very happy when production started up on schedule and he indulged me when I asked if he would take a picture of me in front of one of the 3=phase breakers. He even suggested I pose for another picture in the test lab where they do the final test to ensure the breakers to do not falsh-over when hit by lightning.

View attachment 50205

Well you did ask (smiley-wink)

Ben
Sorry you only had a Prime Mover masted walkie and a Crown PJ to work with:(.

On topic: The few hydro-power designs that they actually show working use the volume and velocity of the water, not head pressure from a drop in feet to generate power.
The good part is, you can toss a 3-pound bass or a small branch in and it goes right thru.
Like the ram pumps, they aren't pretty, or efficient, but they work for decades.
 
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Sorry you only had a Prime Mover masted walkie and a Crown PJ to work with:(.

On topic: The few hydro-power designs that they actually show working use the volume and velocity of the water, not head pressure from a drop in feet to generate power.
The good part is, you can toss a 3-pound bass or a small branch in and it goes right thru.
Like the ram pumps, they aren't pretty, or efficient, but they work for decades.


I'm definitely thinking this is the way to go as well.
 
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