Post #1824125
2026-04-24 10:49 UTC
@mwt I think the main issue would be lack of height... The main driver in a hydropower system besides flow rate is the height of the water column. But there are a lot of cool systems around if you search for "pico hydro", though they are geography-specific, often in rural valleys. And you need to a run a long pipe up a hill usually. But they're awesome when they work because even if it's "low-power" compared to say a solar panel, it's often 24/7 so you can harvest a lot of energy with a small turbine.
There is also this small project recently funded in the EU: https://lauds.eu/open-calls/2/democratizing-energy-through-diy-renewable-energy-solutions/flow-optimized-water-energy-recovery-flower
They're trying to recover energy from mains water systems.
Replies (1)
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@stojg@mastodon.nz 2026-04-24 11:40
@kirk @mwt sorry, this triggered my inner nerd to do some physics calculations, please ignore me. On a roof of 100m2 and 50mm of rain you get 5000kg (or 5m3) of water. Compare that to a big stream / river? My back of the napkin calculations is that 50mm of rain on our roof at 6m height would maybe be a couple of mins of microwaving at 6. With current nz electricity prices that would be like like a couple of NZ cents.