rain catchment + water turbine = Pico Hydro Power

[markweatherill]

Rain is one thing but why not hook up a turbine to your house water supply? Everyone uses some water; mains pressure can be quite high.

[WildBoar]

I guess it is the expense of adding a turbine to your mains supply for very little gain. Running a tap in the house to fill a kettle would produce "next to nothing"

What I am imagining is Dinorwig on a much smaller scale ( electricmountain dot co dot uk ) ... buffering the water and letting it flow with enough force to produce a reasonable amount of power albeit for a 'short' time /not constant

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by WildBoar

This is something I am also very interested in.
We have constant trickle of spring water on the hillside where we live. (low volume) but we have 50m of head to get the pressure up.

What is your flow rate? 50m of head is good, but the flow has to be there.

My parents have an underground stream that flows 4gpm with a 25ft head, which is useless. They also have a creek with perhaps 400gpm flow and 1ft of head; equally useless. A solar charger is better, cheaper, and less complex.

Pico hydro power doesn't make any sense.

[Sven7]

Interesting topic. It may not be useful to most, but as the Wikipedia page says, if you have the water flow it can help offset solar in the winter. It might also depend on how much power you actually use. For instance, my living room/dining room overhead light is a 2W LED, putting out a 25W incan equivalent. It's enough to eat, talk and play board games. I imagine if someone had a very sparse living situation in a cabin or similar they could power a good amount of their daily electricity use with pico hydro. If a couple lights and a phone charge are all you really need, and you have the water flow, why not?