How to save on Batteries? (5) Micro-hydraulic closed circuit
Do you work in a FARM or live in a isolated COTTAGE? How to SAVE BATTERIES in your solar or wind power system?
Pumping water in a closed circuit, accumulating energy and generating afterwards electricity with micro-hydro.
Solar PV or small wind power to raise water to a higher level
We have an installation with photovoltaic modules or a wind mill to provide us electricity. In this case we are only interested in electricity to power a pump capable of pumping water to a higher level reasonably to accumulate energy in the form of potential energy.
We need a closed circuit of water with two large tanks at the upper and bottom level. The hydraulic pump will raise water from the bottom tank to the top deposit. It is preferable to be close to a mountain, with steep slopes, on which to place the two deposits in order to have enough potential energy for micro-hydro generation. This circuit must kept separate an upstream driving (pumping) and a downstream (micro-hydraulic generation).
Micro-Hydraulic Generation
This proposal also requires accumulation batteries, but with a reduced autonomy of a day or so. As the charge level of battery consumption begins to descend on the farm or cottage, a small micro-hydraulic turbine starts to charge batteries with the nominal electrical parameters most suitable for the batteries. The micro-hydraulic turbine can work at optimized fixed flow.
When batteries are loaded, the flow of water stops through the turbine, until the battery requests again new charge.
Advantages of system
- Allows accumulation of energy for long periods of time, for example through a week of wind and then two weeks with no wind (or sun).
- Save on batteries accumulation investment, because with a small electric batteries capacity we have enough short-term autonomy, making the add for long term the micro-hydro alternator.
- The system does not consume water. Deposits can be used for additional applications or leverage existing one.
Disadvantages of the system
- This investment can not be profitable if the installation is very small. The cost benefits occur because the volume of water accumulation decreases the cost per m3 so drastic (cubed) when volumes increase. While batteries have almost no economies of scale as they require more electrical buildup. From a certain size, the overhead of many stationary batteries can be offset against the investment in pumps, tanks and micro-hydraulics.
- It needs to be next to a mountain slope, in order to put the deposit less than 30 meters (according to each calculation) above the bootom tank.
- Increases the complexity of installation and maintenance, only justified by the savings in batteries to accumulate in the long term.
This solution has been implemented with different variants in isolated rural areas and farms. Do you know of specific cases? Thanks for your feedback.
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