It was a representative from Rocky Mountain Power, of all people, who first gave me the idea. "Did I ever tell you about the fishing lodge I went to up in the Idaho wilderness that was powered completely by a nearby stream?", he tells me with a wink. Then he went on to tell me that it will cost somewhere around a 1/4 million dollars to bring power lines up to the camp. That was enough to get me doing some research. A year later, thanks to a generous donation from the folks at Blue Source and the innovation and engineering from the folks at Garner Engineering, I am proud to say that our camp is now completely powered by a micro-hydro generator from Big Canyon Creek. Although it doesn't generate a massive amount of instantaneous power, it is stored in a battery bank and provides up to 90 kilowatt hours per day.
First we created a small retention pond
A 15' concrete dam captures the water
This screen filters the water and draws it into a 6" buried pipeline
1000 feet downstream the pipe enters this concrete vault where the turbine is housed. After it goes through the turbine all the water enters back into the stream. As you can see, although it is not a particularly large stream it has a very consistent flow year round.
My son, Caleb, takes time out of his busy hunting schedule to check the turbine for me.
A buried powerline almost 1 mile long then enters this mechanical room in the back of our lodge and feeds this system which steps down the voltage, turns it into DC, stores it into a battery bank, and then inverts it back to AC as needed. Pretty cool.
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