Hydro Power                 We have found that in our unique location, the middle of the Rakaia river that our most reliable, renewable source of power is from water. We had a fair idea that we could generate far more then we could use, which would allow us to sell it to the national grid. We now have one crossflow turbine installed and two Kaplan turbines installed. With a potential output of 265kw/Hr. Fereday Island at present is installing another hydro turbine, this turbine is another Kaplan turbine (90kW). Here is a picture of the FAT (Factory Acceptance Test) on the turbine. When researching projects, always start with the design and maths before proceeding this can quite often make or break a project. As we support green energy some simple calculations and information depending on what project you are doing can and will be found through this website. Starting When starting a hydro project one of the main things to consider is how much power can be generated. If you had 100% efficiency you would be able to generate:       1 litre per second falling 1 meter will generate 10 watt / second.       3600 litres falling in an hour over 1 meter will generate 10 watt/hour.       3600 cumic (flow of 1000 litres/second) falling in an hour over 1 meter will generate 10 kw/hr. How much power. As there are losses in hydro turbines allow for an efficiency of around 70-80%. The less efficiency for smaller turbines. The design of our system, was based on 2 cumic (2000 litres/second) over a 5m fall, this resulted in the expected energy being around 80kW. This is calculated with the formula below: 2cumic(flow) X 5m (head) X 10kW(10kW per cumic) X 80% efficiency (the larger value of efficiency was used as we are using the upper end of the mini hydro turbines) =80 kW mini hydro generator A (Cross Flow) mini hydro generator B (Kaplan) For More information select the buttons below: