radioman
Super Member
very cool !
Hydroelectric turbine providing power to our off-grid house
- Thread starter schweizer
- Start date
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Way too far away! Seriously, it's about 1200 ft from the house/powerhouse, but I already had cable going up that direction for the well which is about 800 ft up from the house. Since the well pump is a 240 VAC pump, and there was already 00 size hot1, hot2, neutral, and ground wires to that, I got creative with cannabalizing wiring.
For anyone interested, the well pump itself is a 3 wire model Grundfos SQ very soft-start. Great for off grid. The 3 wires are hot1, hot2 (2 legs of 120 out-of-phase) and a neutral/ground. I disconnected the ground coming up from the house area, and attached the 3rd wire (ground) of the pump to the well casing ground. That leaves unused neutral and ground wires in the conduit coming up from the powerhouse, which could then be used for hydro. The hydro turbine produces "wild" AC, which gets rectified to DC and then goes down those 2 wires to the powerhouse, to a Midnight Solar 200 Classic MPPT charge controller. (For you electricians: yes, I know it doesn't pass code, but there are breakers on everything and it should be safe.)
Thanks for the link. I always like looking at other guys designs.
I've had a lot of trouble with my hydro intake over the past week. The weir/dam had seepage under it after I rebuilt it with the backhoe last week -- so much that not enough water was flowing over the coanda screen and into the penstock. It's been a real frustration trying to line the dam with plastic to get water to flow over the top again. Now it's back up to producing 350 watts continuous. When it's summer and the creek dries up, the whole dam will get lined with concrete to seal it.
Marcus