Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am still recovering after saw the bit about the 90 mm pipe running around the walls slowley falling to give greater pressure then reducing down to what ever i fell out of the chair laughing and hit my head on the floor
what rubbish

Still these kids are talking me down

DO IT and prove em wrong. Your not the only one with the idea, i made a small one last year and got 24 V. thats a start. not saying that it will run the system itself, but every lil bit helps

...your mistaken...no one is talking down, they are providing inspiration and determination to make something happen.

Its all in the point of view.



Exactly, I would love to see this idea come to fruition

I actually agree on the fact that if you need to pump water to a higher point the energy gained from Micro-hydro will not give back the energy it took to get the water to the high point.. you need to take into efficiency of equipment. Not everything is 100% so we have Loses to be taken into account..
Pipes have Friction Loses..

You would be better using wasted/excess energy from a Solar or Wind Power system.. ie Once the batteries are charge Most system Either dump excess energy to Resistor bank's or into a Hot water system[Solar]
or in the case of wind the turbine is braked out of circuit till it is needed to charge the batteries again..


now if you had a Creek flowing thru your Property you could make your own dam[Illegal] and divert the water thru a set of Pipe's Reducing in size as you drop down[The further you drop in height vs Water Volume] the more energy you get.. Direct the Water to a penstock to turn your micro-turbine..
- The best turbine is made from a Fisher and Paykel motor..[Needs to be rewired]..

Juergen..

This reminds me of when my father talked about hooking up an inverter to run a battery charger! The laws of conservation were lost on him! I belive there is a place for hydropower in AP, IF you have a stream with enough fall. There are turbines that are made to go on the end of a pipe that one could use to generate electricity. However, pumping the water up to the turbine would be folly. You might as well just run the pump to run your sump, then there would be just one source of ineffeciency.

amidoingitrite?

You need to wear a tinfoil hat... and sit under a pyramid... to have any chance of making it work

LOL @ pancakes. Love the car one...

The idea of something for nothing never ceases to amaze.. I guess that's why so many people buy lotto tickets

Kinda on "topic" If you had excess solar/wind/hydro power to burn and you wanted to store the excess energy by pumping water into to a tank that was on higher ground (convert to potential energy) I wonder how big a tank and how high it would have to be to be useful.
And how much excess energy you would actually need.

Energy storage is by far the biggest bottleneck when it comes to advancement of technology.
Batteries are such poor energy storage devices. Losses to charge, losses to discharge, limited lifespan, expensive to buy to start off with....
There are some flywheel energy storage devices used in some industry, probably a bazillion times higher cost/W than batteries though..
I guess we just need better batteries
Anyone (not)seen Ironman ?

+1 for Better Batteries..

Juergen

A lot of racing sailors are starting to purchace lithium ion batteries the size of 8D flooded batteries, as they can store much more energy and weigh far less. Too bad they are in the tens of thousands of dollars each. Thankfully due to Moores Law, we should see them at lower prices in the future. I was also thinking that a tank on a higher elevation would be a fruitful way to store potential energy. Though, i was thinking of an old fashoned windmill well pump. I belive that if you put a float switch in the storage tank, you could switch on the pump in the sump, to provide reliability when the wind isn't blowing. That way the storage tank always has some water to keep the system running, and it would still use less energy than a constant running pump. I doubt that the hoa at my townhome would let me try it though!

Ahhh, LiFePo4 batteries... where is the drool smiley?!
I was looking to convert a car to electric using these, unfortunately they would cost $10,000 for the batteries alone
Maybe thats why there arent many electric cars around!

Heres my "perpetual motion" machine, wheres the power source?



Andrew

that's a sterling engine... it works on the difference in temperatures between the top and bottom of the piston

http://youtu.be/A25FRpkbDxU


if you got a few of these tb4000 devices and ran a generator off of them it should give you all the free energy needed. They are developing the new models with scaled up parts soon I hope.

and thats a load of BS. There is a good reason that "Free Energy" machines arnt actually used anywhere... they dont work.
Prove me wrong, and ill change my mind, but untill then...

LOL, just watched the rest of that youtube clip...