Pint-size Hydro Power on Tap

Very good. Using water-powered turbines on pressure regulation outflow allows electricity to be generated without reducing the existing flow, thus the overall water-pumping system efficiency is increased.

Good thinking, and the closest thing I have actually seen to "free energy" (not quite a free lunch, more like buy a lunch and get a free desert). Let's hope they have some luck with the low-pressure, high-flow waste stream project.

Simple, elegant, and effective - just what all brilliant ideas are. With the high energy consumption necessary for the production of potable water, this enables municipal water works to produce some of their own electricity, thus reducing overall consumption. Makes you wonder why no one has ever thought of it before. Perhaps a way can now be found to use the brine reject stream from a very large scale reverse osmosis plant to generate electricity. This will definitely make it more economically viable to reuse treated domestic effluent for potable water.

Greetings,

This has been done before, in the early 1980's as a Field Service Rep for Allis-Chalmers Hydro Turbine Div of York, PA -

I started a 1 MW hydroturbine at the discharge of an 8 ft diameter water main as it leaves LA and then heads down into the Simi Valley, either the water discharged thru flow regulating valves into an open chest or thru the water-turbine driving the 1 MW generator and into the open chest, the system is Cayegaus Municipal Water District.

I started a 100kW (actually 70kW output typical) at the discharge of the City of Fayetteville, NC waste water plant into the Cape Fear River, it was a irrigation pump run backward as a hydroturbine belt driving a 100 hp induction motor. The entire package was inside a steel "can" with a Navy hatch door on top as it was underwater when ever the river flooded.

In southern PA there is also a syphon penstock driving If I remember right a 1500kW hydroturbine that emptied the excess from a drinking water reservoir. Started it up also.

Whats old is new again.

Dan