[Kaare_Mai]

Hi everyone!

I need your great minds to help me out on this one


I have been thinking if its possible to implement a sort of Pumped Hydro Storage System for home use.



This is a basic drawing with NO regards to dimensions as you can see!

But i mean is this idea possible to use? Or will the dimension of the tanks and height be too great to deliver enough power for a normal home with 3 poeple living there?

For the discussion, lets assume that i have enough solar windpower to drive the system.

[UIUCstudent01]

Ok, first of all: Labels and the way it flows are nice things to put - even if it is a MSPaint drawinig.

Second: I know nothing! I see nothing!

[gnm]

An interesting idea but I believe you will find it more cost effective to charge batteries from the wind generator than to try to extract the power from elevated water. You would need a humongous amount of water at a substantial height to be effective at all and the cost of constructing such a system would be far higher than simply buying a forklift battery (for instance) and charging that from the wind genny...

-G

[meekoil]

I too daydreamed about a set up like this, unfortunately the amount of head(height) and amount of water flow required is too large.

Take a look at this product.

With 20 feet of head, it takes 100 gallons per minute just to generate 230 watts of power. So it you could elevate 5000 gallons of water (40000 pounds!) 20 feet, you could generate 230 watts for 50 minutes or .19 Kwh. Whoopee.

As gnm said, use batteries.

[strider3700]

I'm kinda lucky, I have 115 feet of head and 6-8 gallons/minute in the winter. I'm building a little turbine at the moment that will hopefully get me 50-60 watts continuous. or 1.4 kwh/day I'm doing this on the ultra cheap as that works out to about 8 cents a day's worth of electricity. If I wanted to spend $1700 for assurance for backup power I can get the same power out of solar panels 8 months out of the year and not have to worry about all the water and so on.

For your purpose you'll lose far more in conversions of pumping it up there then you will gain by not having batteries.

If your looking for a non battery bank storage system to balance out the find load look into compressing air. I've never done the math but compressed air has a lot of power in a smallish space. A 12V compressor running when ever the wind blows to fill the tanks and then another generator to handle the compressed air when it's released. Dump the power into a small battery and then run it into an invertor maybe?

By the way a normal home with 3 people in it sucks down a lot of power. You need to be an ultra conserving home to even consider RE as your only source of power.

[Kaare_Mai]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ith 20 feet of head, it takes 100 gallons per minute just to generate 230 watts of power. So it you could elevate 5000 gallons of water (40000 pounds!) 20 feet, you could generate 230 watts for 50 minutes or .19 Kwh. Whoopee.

[skyemoor]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kaare_Mai', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ith 20 feet of head, it takes 100 gallons per minute just to generate 230 watts of power. So it you could elevate 5000 gallons of water (40000 pounds!) 20 feet, you could generate 230 watts for 50 minutes or .19 Kwh. Whoopee.