Sunday, March 31, 2019

Repairing our hydro power dam in pictures.

We finally got around to repairing the 1820's stone and cement dam that had been holding a very small impoundment (1000 gal) of water for our private hydro power plant.
We built the plant in 2006-7 and ran autonomously off the grid until 2014 when we got net metered to the grid. We would freeze up every winter when temps dropped below zero due to too little water above the intake.
The repaired, improved and strengthened dam will give us deeper water above the intake and protect against catastrophic failure incase of flood carried boulders pounding the back of the dam.
This story begins with a short movie clip of the 2, 2011 storms, one two punch, named Irene and lee taken just upstream from the dam. The intake flume is on the left and barely survived.
Note the force with which the water carrying boulders hits the vertical back of the old dam.





   The plywood covers a collection box for a possible future Coanda screen for summer operation.











3 comments:

Abid Khan said...

HI sir.please help me if you can.i have a tube well which water flow is 1.25 cu-sec..i want to install a turbine on this water.can you please guide me how i install and how much electricity will produce from this turbine..i want to run 20 hp motor from turbine electricity.

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Rob said...

I would need to know not only the volume (1.25 cu ft / sec) but also the head or vertical distance that the water will drop down to answer that question. Wanting to get 20HP may not be possible if head is too low. You'll need around 200 ft.