micro hydro system in aquaculture

[Kaduda]

Has anybody done this? I figure since we are moving water around, why not produce some electricity with it.

Basic design would be water in a tower (10-14' high) flowing into a micro hydro system at the base which would then flow into the fish tank and remaining system, then pumped back into the (10-14') storage tank.

Thoughts?

[beelove]

I think you would actually be wasting more electricity because you may only get about 70% of the energy put in the turbine out as electricity. Plus more energy to pump the water to that height. pumps also have loss in mechanical output to electric input. It may be worth installing if you did not have the extra height to pump, but the turbine is costly and the time it would take to offset that cost may take years.

[Pseudoreality]

I second that. Everytime you convert energy from one form to another you have loses in efficiency, especially when you go from work to energy. So pumping it up hill is going to take more energy than you are going to get out of it coming back down. So better thing to do would be to minimize how much you have to pump it up hill. I don't know that much about aquaculture so I don't know if there's a reason why you would want to pump it that high it the first place.

[GaryD]

Hi Kaduda,

As other members have suggested, the energy used to pump the water would exceed that produced by the micro-hydro system.

You could make it work if you used a windmill to pump up the water into a reservoir and then allowed to run back down through a micro-hydro unit.......but, even then, it would be more efficient to use the wind to produce the electricity directly.

The other way that it might work is where you have access to a source of fast-flowing water (for which you don't have to pay) into which you could hook your hydro unit.....eg...if you lived alongside of someone who had to use megalitres of water for commercial horticulture. Of course, in that event, they'd probably quickly decide to cut you out of the action anyway.

Micro-hydro generators work best where you can tap into a water supply at a high point and discharge it at a lower point.....like a mountain stream or similar. They are one of my favourite alternative energy systems.

Gary