Free electricity from water

This seems like a way that one could produce electricity for free if one was not billed for water usage. You would use municipal water to spin a hydraulic motor whose shaft would be connected to a generator producing a voltage and current. This electricity could then be used for any purpose you could think of.

 

If someone had a landlord who paid the water bill, they could hook small generator to a sink and charge a battery to power a light bulb. There is not much pressure on a faucet - that's why I suggest getting a small generator and charging a battery instead of directly sending power to a bulb.

60 liters of water for a 60 watt bulb for 12 hours
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/how-much-water-does-it-take-to-make-electricity

I'd say the landlord would catch on though.

 

Also the electricity required to get that much water to you would surely be more than what you'd save. The net result would be more damage to the environment than if you just plugged into the wall, I would assume.

 

You are right. There are more energy losses converting from electric power to hydraulic power back to electric vs just electric straight to your light bulb.

 

Also, I think when landlord's pay for water it is only up to a "reasonable" amount.

 

It would depend on flow rate and pressure, the more you have the more electricity you get. A DC generator and a battery would be a good idea. If everyone did this though, there would be no pressure left, and water would barely trickle out and the city would wonder about the extra water use...I just found that they already do know about this tho. There is this link http://bluelivingideas.com/2012/02/...-uses-water-pressure-to-generate-electricity/

 

Piezoelectric roadways..
Piezoelectric road harvests traffic energy to generate ...

 

I think I heard about this or something very similar before. Using the vibrations as energy. I think I saw something about using the wind or air currents generated by moving traffic to spin turbines but don't remember the details or how it would be implemented. Trains produce a lot of wind too, there's gotta be some power there.

 

That's brilliant. I wish I would have thought of that. I wonder if they could do it in malls and other public places with imperceptibly flexible floors. Every footstep could contribute.

 

school gym classes can power the lights haha

 

Hydrogen generator.

Yahoo is showing me lots of cool ideas right now..

 

You can charge a battery with a potato...

 

I could probably use my piss as an electrolyte to make a battery if i had two different metals touching the piss but I doubt it would produce much current

 

"Parasitic Energy harvesting", sweet!:2thumbsup:

 

this is what is called hydro-electric. once upon a time, every major dam had them! even a lot of not so major ones. if human population hadn't grown beyond what it was in the mid 1800s, we could be getting all our electricity that way, or most of it.

congradulations, you've just reinvented the wheel.

 

Thanks to the father of hydroelectric power, Nicola Tesla

 

You don't think I know about hydro power? Of course I do, this would just be a very scaled down version of it. I just didn't think it needed to be stated.

 

ah, i see what you mean. personal/home/distributed hydro. one of the solar distributers where i lived a couple of years ago, and still less then a couple of hundred miles from where i live now, carried home scale hydro gen sets like that in their catalogue. they probably still do. there was also, i remember in the county where i lived, there was some one who the water supply flume ran through their back yard, had a wooden undershot wheel hooked up to a little automotive generator that was turned by the water going by in the flume. not everyone is located where it would be possible to do that, but yes, otherwise this is absolutely true and has been done as well.

the combination of small scale wind and solar, with good storage technology would be easier for most people to set up, though possibly not as cheap to install. and yet you can get, well again where i lived a couple of years ago, there was a fry's electronics, and they had a kit with four solar panels equalling more then a meter of collecting area, and the whole shebang, other then the deep cycle batteries to go with it, was like less the 500 bux.

sierra solar systems has all this kind of stuff in their catalogue too, and maybe there might be some outlet like that near where you live.

i don't see what i did with my last catalogue from them. some of the farm supply outfits carry stuff like that too.

there's a bunch of solar outfits on line that also carry wind and water stuff. i just spotted a couple more in a magazene called back home, that i don't remember where i picked up. i'm sure a bunch of them can be found in mother earth news or rodale's organic gardening or the usual online search engines.

 

A good starting place to research low-head generating systems suitable for homesteaders etc is Stewart Brand's "Whole Earth Catalog".

 

i had one of those once upon a time too, back in the day. i've still got the book 'shelter'. although its been ages since i had alicia bay laural's living on the earth, or the foxfire series.

you bring backs good memories.