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If you have the moving water to drive it, and the infrastructure to manage it, sure. If not, panels are a lot less expensive.
by wkearney99 4y ago
If you have the moving water to drive it, and the infrastructure to manage it, sure. If not, panels are a lot less expensive.
- puzzlingcaptcha 4y agoAnd if you can't dam it (you usually can't at that scale) then it can't be any moving water either, but with sufficient head and flow that is also seasonally reliable. This narrows down installation sites by a lot.
- bell-cot 4y agoSuggested: 's/moving water/very reliable moving water/'. A who lot of smaller rivers & streams have highly seasonal flow rates. And that's in years which do not qualify as "drought".
- mikeyouse 4y agoAside from just flow, you need substantial head -- their flow chart shows that their smallest 500kw turbine needs at a minimum 1,200gpm and ~60ft head through the turbine, so you'd need a river with much more than that so you're not fully destroying the ecosystem. That really, really restricts the possible locations.
- ricardobeat 4y agoIn the video they talk about installations with 5m head (300kW) and 2m head (15kW).
- Mister_X 4y agoI agree, but even when I was installing/servicing hydro, wind and solar systems years ago, solar was still the least expensive way to go if one had sufficient solar exposure. And solar panels have drastically come down in price since then too, so solar is certainly the most economical way to go for off grid power these days.