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EA was named as a supplier for a dam construction project which went out for tender. This large dam is for the water supply for a community in the interior of BC. A small amount of power was required to operate the monitoring and automatic valves.

Details

• Microhydro turbine generates between 50-300 watts of power
• Stored in a sealed AGM battery bank
• DR3624 3.6 kW inverter powers loads

Challenges:

• Engineer did not properly account for variations in head pressure as the water level rises and falls. This had a dramatic effect on the power output.
• 1 week after this system was installed, it was stolen. So we went back a week later, and re-did everything.
• Plumbing of microhydro manifold very inefficient due to exessive 90o bends.
• Engineer's plan for 500W 120V heater run off microhydro through inverter to keep the building warm did not work and the room was subjected to freezing, and damaged batteries.

October 2009 update.

After the court case was settled, the water district contacted EA. We dusted off our original designs of this sytem and re-installed the microhydro system according to best-practices including low-friction plumbing and a DC heat dump load.

The system is now performing properly.




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