Micro Hydro?

Stinicker

Hey Guys, I have been thinking about this topic for a while and recently eventually did some research. On my land I have some brilliant water resources and I was thinking about possibly trying to harness them for Hydro electricity.

The water has never dried up even in the hottest summers as it is fed from high bogs in the mountain. The river could easily have I would estimate a 100-200 metre head or more as it is coming down a mountain all within my own land. On the farm I have some outhouses and a garage and an old run down farmhouse and there is an active ESB connection however I don't live there myself and the nearest house is several hundred metres away.

As I haven't done a huge amount of research I don't know much about it. A friend of mine told me the ESB will not buy your electricity outright but rather give you "credits" back towards your bill which is around €30/month and as it is just some sheds and the odd tool use I would fall into the new minimum usage <2kw a day.

Doing the Hydro for the farm and outhouses would not be the point but rather just as another income stream and trying to utilise all resources as I read you can only export 6KW/an hour on a standard connection so with their feed in rate of 9c/kw I could export all my capacity of 6KW x 24hrs x 365 = €4,730.40 or possibly more if I could get a 3 phase line which would give me double the capacity and I have no shortage of water or fall. This of course all assumes that the ESB would pay me cash for the exported power and not credits? However I'd still do it for a power swap or sell/buyback.

Eg. if I sold €1,000 worth of electricity, I wonder would the ESB give me €1,000 worth of power at my residence, bearing in mind they'd be buying from me at 9c/kw and selling at 16c/kw whilst I'd have less KW's at my home due to the price difference. €4,730.40 my earnings from export would easily cover all my current ESB which runs at around €1,500 and allow me to replace my oil heating with Electric saving another €2k a year, add in a future hybrid electric car in a few years and my plan would be for self sufficiency to basically transport my water power from the farm to my home several miles away.

Alternatively if this micro-Hydro plan is not possible I would not mind spending €50k - €100k developing the resource on a proper commercial basis, as I have seen a few of these hydro plants around the place generating 1 and 2MW of power on similar water resources to my own. getting loans etc. as I have lots of water. I am very much into these type of things and if I could get a guaranteed income stream I would be happy to invest as these things generally take several years before they pay for themselves and then afterwards you can reap any profits.

Donadea Leo

Sounds like a good idea, I have no clue about such things but watched an episode of Countryfile for some reason and there was a guy there who brought back to life an old mill and was selling the electricity back to the energy suppliers - I'm in work so can't access their website but link below may well be it. Financially created a nice steady income stream.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017ynbk

Would love to know how you get on as sounds interesting - very reliable energy source though not sure about impact on environment and regs around that. Best of luck.

BryanF

I recommend this book Going-Flow-Small-Scale-Water

As said above you would be best to engage with a planning consultant that can help you navigate the Local authority and EPA requirements and also the help of an local Engineer. let us known how you go

AntrimGlens

Stinicker,
I think one of the guys might have been referring to the system i installed a year agothat appeared on the countryfile series. I am however in NI and it certainly was much more viable for me to set this up due to ROC's payments. I installed a 12kw pelton wheel running off a constant spring all year round and also some surface run off from the hills, i have a head of 125 metres and fow of 14 litres/sec. It was commissioned on 13th July 11 and to date has generated 63000kwh all of which is being spilled back to the grid. I am currently building a 3000sf ft house on the farm and this shall be used to power the heat exchange pump for the geothermal as well as provide us with nearly all of our power.The whole thing cost me £70K to get up and running, has never stopped in the11 months to date and has only required two grease nipples to be greased monthly.I got a grant of £35K and based on last years generation (albeit a very wet year) i should have it paid off in 4 years. I have had loads of people come and look at it and theres at least 8 more guys i know that are currently undertaking similar systems.

BryanF

Great stuff , a few pictures would be great and maybe a breakdown of the costs if that's not to much hastle.

AntrimGlens

Main costs of installing a micro hydro scheme, this is based on my own installation of a 12kw pelton wheel scheme on my own farm with no land ownership or water rights issues. I brought in a main contractor, although i could probably have done it a bit cheaper had i got the time but i work off farm full time and on farm evenings and weekends.

12kw pelton wheel, generator and electrical switchgear- £25,000
800 feet of pipework 6" diametre 12mm,14mm,16mm wall thickness- £10,000
plastic welding of pipeline - 1 day - £1000
construction of intake, sediment trap, and turbine house - £10,000
Digging of pipeline, laying pipe and sensor cable, gravel backfilling and resurfacing (2 track machines, 2 tractors and stonecart) -£8,000
Electrical connections including 175metres of 5 core cable, install of new 25kw transformer and digging of trenches, kiosk and ducting - £7,000
Professional fees, architect fees, archaeology reports and planning apps - £9,000

I had no real probs getting it through planning apart from a stoopid archaelogical dig that i had to do which was an extra £2,000 for no benefit whatsoever and held things up for a couple of months. In all from when work started on linking into the spring until commissioning was 12 weeks.

Still have received no income from either PowerNI or from DETI for payment of ROCs - these are due in August. As i am below 50kw i am contractually obliged to sell my excess electricity to PowerNI and receive annual payment rather than monthly.
Based on the 63,000kw produced to date i should receive 17.3p per unit from DETI and about 6.3p per unit from Power nI - about £14,800 in total. However when i get the house built and use the electricity in it, my Power NI income will reduce but then i have no leccy bills hopefully.

Will post pics when i find the lead for the camera

Coles

Thanks for the info, AntrimGlens.

The situation in the Republic is substantially different from across the border. Here there is little or no support for MicroGeneration and the sale of 63,000 units of electricity would yield closer to £5,000, not £14,800. Of course if you use the energy to off-set other energy consumed you can increase the value of the electricity produced, and of all the 'alternative' energy systems MicroHydro can give the best long term return on investment (both financial and in terms of energy invested). Assuming you have a suitable resource, of course.

Did you require an abstraction licence?

AntrimGlens

Coles,
Yea I required an abstraction licence it cost me £200 and thats a one off payment. I had to submit a monitoring return in April to demonstrate what my flow rates were, kwh output on a weekly basis and few other pieces of info. I had a visit by NI Environment Agency who inspected the scheme to confirm my returns were accurate and that i was leaving a residual flow in the watercourse. They told me that they'll probably not bother inspecting me again as my scheme is so small scale and that there are no fish in the watercourse.
I just find it hard to fathom that i need to spend 200 quid on a piece of paper to allow me to take my own water out of a stream and return it at a different location, considering how many of the streams on our land have been diverted from their original watercourses as we undertook considerable land reclaimation during the 80s/90s

Coles

Well, I can understand why they have that abstraction licence system in place if it encourages people to properly assess the resource before proceeding with the scheme.

AntrimGlens

Eventually managed to get around to posting these pics of the construction of my scheme last year. I hope it gives a bit of an idea of what was required, i'll stick more up if anyones interested.

TheRickshawCo

Are you up and running yet? i.e.

Are you getting paid from the Electricity grid companies?

Do you have any pictures/videos of your stream that your diver the water from? (want to get an idea of type of flow you need to generate £14K of tricty to sell back)

When you decided to do it, did you get a consultant to tell if it was viable or did you do it yourself?

Thanks

L.

mchammer

Great thread... I found this clip guy from NY in the states that is using a 3 phase motor and centrifugal pump instead of a pelton wheel as his turbine. He is basically using the pump to spin the 3 phase motor in order to generate the juice. He is not selling to the grid but is using it in his house so he has wired the 3 phase motor to output single phase which basically reduces costs as these items are much easier to come by.. He has about 200ft of head generating 92psi and is using 500ft of 8" steel pipe as the penstock.. Its pretty impressive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRl0ztxn094

.

I hope to emulate this someday If I can get the cash together.. I have about 180ft of head over 400ft..

pk.conn

Hi,

Great thread, very informative.
Have you completed the project?
Was considering a similar set-up for the river beside my fathers farm. I have about 70m of head and a considerable flow rate (haven't actually measured it yet).
Given the very small domestic usage in my home house I would like to export any potential power back to the grid.
Has anyone any information on the possibility of new REFIT prices coming online as an incentive for small scale domestic generation (hydro, PV, etc.) in the Republic?
Also want kind of planning requirements are needed? The river itself only runs parallel to our land so would I get turned down if I was to request permission to divert 100 l/s to a small scale turbine?
Any advice or recommendations would be really appreciated.

Thanks,
Pk.

rolion

pk.conn wrote: »

Hi,

Great thread, very informative.
Have you completed the project?
Was considering a similar set-up for the river beside my fathers farm. I have about 70m of head and a considerable flow rate (haven't actually measured it yet).
Given the very small domestic usage in my home house I would like to export any potential power back to the grid.
Has anyone any information on the possibility of new REFIT prices coming online as an incentive for small scale domestic generation (hydro, PV, etc.) in the Republic?
Also want kind of planning requirements are needed? The river itself only runs parallel to our land so would I get turned down if I was to request permission to divert 100 l/s to a small scale turbine?
Any advice or recommendations would be really appreciated.

Thanks,
Pk.

Not sure / famlliar with your setup but i will design it to cover the whole home consumption first and only.
There is no payment / FIT yet and not sure when or under what conditions.

Enjoy it while you're lucky ...