Electrical Power System at Willowretreat.
The system is based on basic principles of gravity, and as far as we know gravity is still free and readily available.
All our electrical energy is generated by a micro hydro plant.
Oh you want details?
OK grab a tea/coffee or other drink, and have a seat and I'll start…
The micro hydro system is at the mid base area of one of our larger hills, the water flows year round with varying amounts of flow, gallons per minute (gpm) depending on rain, snow temperature etc etc.
The intake for the turbine is approximately 170’ above the turbine, referred to as the head. And this can be extended another 600’ should we wish to increase power.
The water passes through a small sluice, basically channeling the water to our filter at the intake point; here there is a coarse mesh stainless screen, designed for removing larger objects, such as branches, leaf mulch and small animals.
The water then enters 2” HDP pipe (high density poly), this pipe is tough durable and will take freezing without bursting, trust me I know this from using it in remote camps in the Arctic.
Drop from the intake to the turbine is 170’ and by the time it gets to the turbine manifold we get appx 65 psi water pressure at the nozzles.
Nozzle size varies according to flow, but these range from 1/4” to ½”.
The water is injected at higher pressure onto the turbine blade, there are many calculations that are required to get the nozzle size, distance from turbine and angle correct, fortunately there are a number of programs out there that you can download, and these will do the math for you. Or you could buy a pre-made unit from a dealer, and just bolt it in place, hook up the water and away you go.. NOT……
The turbine spins and via a connecting shaft this drives our permanent magnet generator.
We produce 230v at 60 Hz at the generator head, L1 and L2 are at 116v and neutral is bonded to casing.
Current power production is around 1.1kwhr. Appx 26kw a day.
The power then passes thru a bank of capacitors, and then passes along our power lines, number 8 wire, for a distance of appx 1km.
When the power enters the house, it gets transformed into 12v dc, this splits off to the battery bank and maintains our bank of 20 Nickel cadmium batteries, each battery is 1.2V with 220amps.
Total amp reserve is 4400amps at 24v, quite enough to make toast...
Our battery reserve is used as a load spreader and sudden surge bank.
I.e. if we suddenly use the washing machine, this will overload our generator's capacity, so power is diverted from the battery bank, via an inverter to supply the extra power we require.
When the extra load has finished its demand, the system will automatically recharge the batteries, ready for future demand without any noticeable loss of power to the house.
Now as our generator is running 24 hours a day seven days a week, the system will get to a point where we are generating more power than we can use or store, this happens on a regular basis, this is where the charge controller comes in to play.
The charge controller is basically a switch, that once it detects a increase above a certain voltage, it will dump power.
The power dump at this point is a bank of ceramic coated electrical coils, basically a big electrical heating element, which uses up the surplus power by converting it to heat, a waste of energy indeed.
We have plans to purchase two electric golf carts for running around the retreat and going down to the road to pick up mail and general chores etc, maybe even a plug in hybrid for highway use; this will offset the need for dumping power.
When the cabins are built we will be increasing the power output by a factor of three, this is being planned and built as I type.
The cabins will utilize a low head high volume system, running two units of one stream with sluice gates to direct and control water flow and volume.
This will give us additional 2.3kwhr, and in combination of increasing the head from our original system and increasing pipe size and turbine, we expect to generate another 2.3kwhr from this system as well for a conservative 4kwhr, generated 24X7 by 365 days a year. All from clean non polluting renewable energy.
This is just a basic outline of the system, there are many technical details that I have left out, due to space, time and the fact that I'm not a technical writer etc. but feel free to e-mail us with questions, or better yet plan on a visit...
Our drinking water is a whole other story, that is if Anne makes me another cup o’ tea lol
Battery bank. The batteries were liberated from the old Diefenbaker bunker when it was decommissioned.
After waiting too long for tea, Paul's having a go at the electrical panel. DO NOT DO THIS. ;P
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