 So in Catalonia, I had this set up just as a proof of concept. I didn't have any load attached It was just to see What kind of voltage I was getting what kind of RPMs and just that it would work basically the turbine is currently putting out 192 watts with a 2.5 meter drop and About I still need to measure the flow rate, but it's about 35 liters per second The sweet spot like the top of the power curve is around 60 something volts at 3. something amps for 200 192 200 watts the cost of this is still about 40 euro I call it the $50 water turbine just to be safe. It's actually less than that depending where you get it But all of these materials are available Pretty much everywhere in the world. It's just standard PVC, which I've found everywhere that I've ever been like, you know in cities and towns and that sort of stuff It's a hoverboard wheel as an alternator. That's not going to be so available in developing countries It's super easy to get in Western countries. Yes, like like on the like secondhand Online or something eBay or local classified side. You can get like a whole hoverboard for like 20 or 30 bucks And it's like two wheels battery charge control or that stuff like they're very good units And that's the alternator is working very well. It should be good for 300 to 400 watts total and Does really good voltage per RPM and then the impeller is just a computer power supply 120 millimeter plastic fan and that's it. That's some bits of PVC. It's nuts and bolts and an alternator into fan So just a quick walkthrough of how I've been testing this It's really basic I've got the three phases from the alternator coming through a three phase bridge rectifier to convert it to DC and then I've got a voltage meter just across the DC output and in parallel I've got a Amp meter in series coming through to the load and then this goes back to the other DC channel In like testing like wind turbines and other things I need to test I'll be basically doing exactly the same setup because it works really well the Liquid Rio stat is just a plastic bottle with a water and washing soda mix and then Two stainless steel cable electrodes basically one of which Just stays all the way in the water And the other one I can pull in and out to set the load And that's so and then the the one that's static just has tape along it so that only The very end is in the water. So when This electrode is just touching the water. It's some maximum resistance mineral current And then when it's like all the way in Almost touching here. It's minimal resistance maximum current. I don't need to know I don't need to get it exactly the right homage I just need to be able to set it to varying points And I read the current going through it and the voltage going through it directly with the meters And that that lets me calculate the power basically so All of this is not part of the turbine This is just the test rig so obviously you wouldn't use this with like a container in a window that you have to pump full This is meant to go in a river. It's just that there's no drop in Berlin. It's all completely flat So here at the Cardis like workshop letting you use it's been a perfect situation just because I can have like all of this right next to the window next to the river and Do it on a really super controlled Scientific kind of like way like changing one thing Testing it. I'd never have this kind of luxury like usually unlike me deep in like a river or somewhere with everything exploding in the strike trying to Hold it together. Let alone like getting, you know, good data. So this has been really good So the good thing about hydro turbines is that they produce power as long as it's like a water supply 24-7 so this doing 200 watts means it's doing 200 watts Constantly which is about five kilowatt hours per day, which is enough to power About a third of a Western suburban home like entirely. So three of these will power your house That can be like in parallel if you've got enough volume or in series if you've got enough like flow enough drop In a global self-developing country kind of situation this will power a lot more houses than that Maybe, you know ten or something depending on like the power needs So what's happening here is I've got a submersible pump in the water Which is filling this bucket which I'll describe in a second and then use that to fill the tank And then use this to fill the turbine To this tap here and when this all fills up as it has now Turn off the pump Close off this valve here just a tape and then the purpose of this bucket Which I've had to reinforce because like I imploded like five of these things like the amount of pressure That's now so as this water drains back out of the system into the river because there's no valve on the pump That sucks this air the last bit of air that was here out of the system Close the tap you can see like the pressure. This is under like it's doing a surprisingly good job But that's what all these like reinforcements are for otherwise it Has happened five times So this is full. This is ready to go This lever here these strings Go down to just like a Like a like a flat gate. I've got at the bottom Like just like a plastic funnel as a sort of like shape to keep the water in basically So I crank this back to that block at the bottom when I pump the water in here fills up from the bottom fills the system and Then now this is ready to start the siphon like it's in the field in like how this will actually be used by people Like what I had in the last video in Catalonia and here with this all like up over and down style like full siphon That was because in Catalonia I was going over a wall out of a mill run that was being fed by a river here. I'm coming out of an IBC I think I'm losing a lot of power to that full siphon system and in the Like actual use case It's probably going to be more like just like a straight pipe a little bit of a bandit at the end Which basically plugs into like a bit of a river like some drop in a river Which means that all of this will be unnecessary All you're gonna have is gonna have like the turbine assembly with the fan and the alternator and then like some feed pipes in and out And that's it. So it's gonna be simpler than this. It's not gonna have any of this testing stuff You just plug it into a river fill it up let it go and it'll Do more power than this is doing the next phase when I'm back in Scotland We'll be plugging it into like an actual river I'm using it like in the end the field find it how it does over time Like people have sort of like raised concern the plastic fan might not be strong enough and they might be right so far It's holding up really well haven't had any problems with it at all But it's not been going for months and months if it does break under actual 24 hour use then I've got options To reinforce that And I'll see if those are necessary to see how they work, but this is not the field test This is the power test Let's just see. Let's see fall apart and it's under Basically, so essentially, there's only one moving part of this. You've got your turbine directly on a shaft Through the back to the alternator. Let's drive in that direct drive. So this is a 120 millimeter of standard computer cooling fan Just plastic but so far is dealing. Okay. Haven't had any breakages with it at all. We'll see how it goes over time Here so the assembly method here is quite quite simple and works quite well That's the shaft. So this is coming out of just like a little connector nut here in here is A bush bearing which keeps it centered at the front. This is basically just a circle of Plastic chopping board. So nylon or PTFE or whatever it's whatever kind of plastic they use So just like cut a circle cut a circle out of that Just bolts through just to lock it into the center That's strong. It's good and strong You want to recess your your bolt heads here Pipe can come over that the one that connects to it and then here You just got just a stack of washers around the around the the shaft around the thread and so that sits inside That bush So there's like this slip between the shaft and the washers and between the washers and the housing So it's really low friction nice and centered doesn't rattle round too much super easy to make Costs basically nothing and won't corrode. So using like a bearing or something in there You'd have to use like a ceramic bearing or something which I mean So the method for attaching The fan onto the shaft here. I've just got like a circle of plastic Draw to make mill hole through both of these. I'll be doing a full build tutorial on all of this So all the step-by-step how to make it Everything so the method here is I've got Circle of plastic to go nuts and bolts those are just so that those heads Come into contact with the wings of this wing nut So the wing nut is locked tight as tight as I can get it to this lock nut here so that basically can't slip and then That just hits on there. So as that turns it drives the whole shaft that sits in the housing And the whole thing turns nicely. So the other end here is just got a couple of wraps of insulation tape and That just goes through there There's a gasket here to show you in a second. So that just comes out. We have a washer Underneath there That goes into there and then that just winds in basically so I've taken the front plate off the alternator and I've drilled a hole in the center of the face and put like a countersunk bolt facing outwards onto that I've locked tight a Wing nut and lock nut and then a connector nut and then if you see I've drilled two holes into the face here to take the wings of the wing nut so That as this turns it turns the whole assembly The reason the main reason for that is that this can wobble a bit So this gets pulled out and tight by the weight of the water on the fan But see none of this is like precision engineered. So I don't want to have to align everything perfectly So this have being a little bit wobbly and with a little bit of give means that it basically makes it into a universal joint So if there's any misalignment between this front bearing and like the the alternator then it's accommodated for in the the slight give of That connection there, but it's also super strong and can't slip against the alternator and you can make the whole thing with nuts and bolts Super easy for basically no money. So under here I've got like the gasket to stop air getting into that system I've got like an 8 millimeter shaft going through a 10 millimeter hole. That's so The shaft again doesn't have to be perfectly aligned with that hole There's some give in that and then just to center the shaft in the hole Here at the back. I've just got this connected Super simple just onto the shaft of the alternator the hoverboard wheel With just two bits of steel on these two threads. I can set this by winding these nuts on and off and I can set like the y-axis by Releasing one side and then just like forcing this over like a couple of millimeters By squishing these two together winding them together and then locking it off again So I've got basically like XY positioning on The alternator assembly just with again just some nuts and bolts We'll show you the gasket and to try a couple of different options for getting this to work nicely And now it's super low friction super low air intake In future versions, I will glue this down rather than using tape, but it's a test So basically under here, there's the hole coming out of here This is an old hole that I was using as a air intake ignore that so the shaft comes out comes through the washer and Then there's a O-ring that goes on to there That sits on the tape That's on there and it's like it's eaten into the tape a little bit But that's a good thing because it just forms like a nice sort of like housing for the O-ring on the on the shaft otherwise the thread would let air slip in through the O-ring and Then I've just got a square of closed cell has to be closed cell if it's open cell. It'll just suck air through itself Square that'll just like foam rubber type stuff which sits over that and that just would like seals on To the O-ring on the top and just stops air from being able to get around it or under it or something The gate is fairly simple, but works really well. This is just a plastic funnel with the Nose cut off which happens to be exactly the right size to fit up inside here You've got this the gasket which is built into the pipe assembly which grabs on to it And then these strings just pull that tight and that locks in and that takes the weight really well It's just got a cloth hinge on the back so that it doesn't fall off and so that the In and out in this can like vary like a little bit This lever system works quite well just for giving this like a good amount of Tension I can get like nice and tight But then it locks in so that it can't get pushed out by the weight It's about 60 kilo So one of the main kind of improvements that I made on this so imagine this is like vertical pointing down to the water was to move the assembly from At the back where I had in the last video in Catalonia directly over the drop This seems to help. I increased the downpipe from 125 to 160 millimeters This was to have more water go through the system But it didn't really increase that by so much because the 125 sort of throttles it down It's kind of like a lowest common denominator kind of thing. It kind of goes as fast as the thinnest amount of light in that diameter of pipe will allow it, but it increased the flow a little bit the main reason for increasing that is that I was getting quite A lot of cavitation coming off the back of the fan So I've played around with like nose cone nose cones and tail cones of here This is the cap of like a bottle of spray on antiperspirant which goes on to the front there That doesn't seem to make too much difference. I've tried it with and without it doesn't really seem to help so much But it did cut down on the cavitation But it didn't really increase the overall power so much the purpose of this sort of increase of diameter here was that when the water passes the fan and Enter this large diameter section of pipe it slows down So the liters per second stays the same but the meters per second is reduced So the the faster the the water is moving the more it like tears off surfaces That's where the cavitation comes from so as soon as it leaves this fan It slows and that stops it from separating out from the fan separating out from the wall And then it's got to like a straight drop to the water another improvement that I made was Dropping the pipe into the water because as soon as I increased the the diameter of the pipe Basically if I put under any load air would get in Up inside the pipe and climb to the top and then break the siphon And the whole thing would stop very quickly So having so I increased the length about two and two point five meters which gave me some more power Just because of that but also that means I could have the pipe under the surface of the water So there was no way for air to get in so I experimented with a few Attempted improvements on this one was to put like a stator turbine in front of the impeller To kind of like direct the water onto the blades Tried a few things none of them were pretty this being an example of How ugly these things came out so taking this out actually increased the power So this is either not a good idea or just needs to be done a lot better than this horror show I've got here the nose and tail cones as I say Probably help a little but I don't know that it's enough to make it worth doing although It's a bit of plastic so it's easy also in here I had some polystyrene sort of like just cut to shape to kind of like block up this sort of back section Just so that the water would come through Smoothly and cleanly. I haven't had a chance to directly compare with and without that to see how much help it makes But on this build I will and those are the most of the improvements that I sort of tried The ones that the ones that helped and the ones that the ones that didn't as it is now I can probably squeeze like a little bit more efficiency out of it But I'd say it's pretty much good to go So this is I'm happy to broadcast this design now. I'm happy to to start working on the tutorial on Full step-by-step which will be on the website open source low tech org and I will Put one of these in the field and have it running for for months and see how that goes but This is ready to make just doing the power that I wanted it to do It's some costing what I wanted it to cost so with this compared to like say a hundred watt solar panel is that this does twice as much power also a Solar panel will produce power for maybe five or six hours a day So if you've got a hundred watts coming out of it, which means it's running, you know pretty optimally You might get 500 watt hours per day This will do 200 watts 24 hours a day so about five kilowatt hours per day So ten times the amount of power per day as opposed to a solar panel a solar panel in a lot of places will cost you 60 to 80 euro this will cost 40 to 50 so it's Half the price and we'll do ten times the power