New Water pipes that generate electricity 24/7

[terracore]

These work in Portland because their water supply comes from Mount Hood. We don't have gravity pulling the water here and it has to be pumped. These pipes are hydroelectric, and the missing power source is gravity.

[OnoOno]

quote:

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Originally posted by whalesong

If Portland can install these water pipes to generate energy 24/7, in any type of weather, and is environmental friendly, then we need to use the same technology here in Puna, Hawaii. Our water pipes on the island are old, and need replacing, which is why it makes even more sense to bring this technology here to Hawaii.
This would also end our need for Geothermal energy. which uses so much of our water for it's drilling. []


Lucid Energyportlands-new-pipes, a Portland-based energy company, has come up with a brilliant idea to harness electricity from the water that flows through a city’s pipes. Small turbines are installed into the pipes which send the energy collected from the flowing water into a power generator.

“It’s pretty rare to find a new source of energy where there’s no environmental impact. But this is inside a pipe, so no fish or endangered species are impacted. That’s what’s exciting,” Gregg Semler, CEO of Lucid Energy, said in a statement.

Read More: http://www.trueactivist.com/portland-jus...ectricity/

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The only way that is would work is if the energy from the sun evaporates water from ocean, and it falls to earth as rain, and is captured at high elevation and allowed to spin turnines on the way down. If you have to first pump water upwards, and then attempt to re-capture SOME of that energy back as it travels down hill, you are walking backwards. For the person capturing the small amount of energy in the water, it is free, but the net is a loss, and I doubt if anyone would support such a net-loss scheme.

Ono - So Fast - So Tasty!

[MarkP]

As others have pointed out, the only energy available is the potential energy of the water being at a high elevation. Everythiing depends on how the water got up there. If you had to consume energy to pump the water up there then this is a losing proposition. If the water fell as rain on a mountain then there is some potential but I don't get how this is different than a conventional hydro plant. There are probably a very few situations in which water had to be pumped up and over a sizable hill to serve customers on the top, resulting in customers on the far side of the hill having excessive water pressure from which some energy could be reclaimed. There may be a few more applications where water is collected high on a hill and used lower down but as far as concepts go this is nothing new. Centrifugal pumps have been used as generators as long as there have been centrifugal pumps powered by electricity. The circumstances for which this has been profitable have been few and far between.

[Carey]

Mark, these are mounted within a water line, & are not utilizing static head as much as "waste energy" ie: left over potential post either a hydroelectric or water utility dam or reservoir, so there most likely is no "dam free" source, just harvesting a little bit more...

This system most likely also puts additional frictional & vortex potentials (also increase parts wear n the water system, including the added moving parts of the system), so each system in a series will likely have decreased production, & water service downstream will have less vl/press than without these devices...

So anyone looking at this would have to do a lot of cost/benefit analysis...can be done, can increase electric production, but with a cost & must have a PE source, as noted above, and probably the only viable ones would utilize some sort of Grav.E for the PE...

[Guest]

This is total nonsense. Energy is consumed somewhere to pressurize the water. More energy must be consumed to maintain pressure at the terminus if energy is being drained by in-pipe turbines. This is like the 'electric cars' that are in reality 'coal-fired cars' because the electricity comes from burning coal. This may be making someone piles of money off state bureaucrats who never passed a high-school physics class, but is is not the answer to energy shortages.

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You can't fix Samsara.

[ericlp]

I wonder how these taste?

How about the grease that bearings sit in? What happens when the seal breaks... How about the paint on the turbine itself? What happens when they require maintenance and they will. Does that mean no water for a day or so? I don't know... Portland has a lot of hills with HUGE water sheds on top of mountains and old volcano's... Not just little water tanks, I'd imagine the flow (head) is a lot more pressure than Hawaii's tiny water tanks on the hill. Besides that, these things look really big, not some 8" or less main than Hilo has. I just don't see this working out much for Hawaii. Portland and their million gallon plus reservoirs are more adapt.


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