Waterwheel Plans, How to Make Water Wheel Generators for a Power Generator Project
A Water wheel (Waterwheel) is a system for extracting usable power from the water flowing in a river or stream. Along with windmills, water wheels have being powering the milling of flour and other industry for hundreds of years.
Although waterwheels have now died out of use across most of the world thanks to national grid electricity, they are still in common use off-grid in places such as Nepal and India where hundreds of thousands of waterwheels are still used to this day. For many in the Himalayan regions a water wheel is the only source of power, together with dangerous kerosene lamps.
Now people are looking at ways in which waterwheels can be used to generate electricity, not just for these remote regions, but also in Europe and North America where enormous energy resources are untapped at present.
In developing countries where water wheel power is common, electricity can be generated for those people who live where the electricity grid cannot reach, and combined with modern energy efficient LED and CFT lighting, can improve their standard of living enormously. It is not complicated or expensive to modify an existing waterwheel driven mill to operate as an electricity generator.
One example of how simply a water power can be used to generate electricity. If a small watermill turns at around 60rpm a belt to an alternator is made to turn at hundreds of rpm, (thanks to a pulley ratio of 10+ to 1) and so the voltage generated (14.4 VDC) is perfect for recharging 12V batteries.
Car alternators can supply hundreds of watts of electrical power which can then be used to power lighting, radios, computers and so on. The typical cost of such a system is about $50, and has the advantage that the waterwheels used to generate power has been and can continue to be maintained by the mill owner as it has been for centuries.
To find out more about this fascinating use of waterwheels, please click here: Nepal Ghatta Project
Water wheels come in two main types: undershot, and overshot. Historically the undershot water wheel was the commonest as it is the cheaper and simpler to build. In this system the wheel is placed over a fast flowing river. The water hits paddles which protrude all around the wheel and therefore turns the wheel. This system can only be used where the flow of water is very fast as little of the energy of the water (around 20%) is used.
The Overshot water wheel is more complicated, but much more efficient as almost all of the water flow is used for power. A dam and a pond or lake are built and used to channel water to just below the top of the wheel where it collects in buckets. The weight of the water in the buckets turns the wheel as the buckets on the other side are empty and therefore lighter. When a filled bucket has caused the wheel to rotate, and that bucket has reached the bottom of the wheel, it is inverted and the tail water falls out. That bucket the continues around the wheel empty until it gets back up to the top to be filled again. Around 70% of the energy carried by the water is used in an overshot waterwheel.
Historically waterwheels were used to turn milling stones and other mechanical tasks. However they are being strongly reconsidered for the generation of electricity.
A waterwheel for example has a lot less environmental impact than hydroelectric power generation since rivers do not need to be diverted, and the pressure of the water is not increased and so fish are less likely to be injured or killed. The costs per Watt of power is comparably low.
The technology that will save humanity One of oldest forms of energy used by humans, sunlight concentrated by mirrors, is poised to make an astonishing comeback. It may be the most important form of clean electricity to meet all the demanding requirements of this century.
--------------------------------
More
----------------------------