Make: Online : Bucket-borne hydroelectric generator

Bucket-borne hydroelectric generator

Pico Hydroelectric Generator in 5 gallon bucket developed by Sam Redfield and tested at La Florida in Guatemala. The generator is meant to be a very small, cheap, low impact generator designed to be used with existing gravity fed irrigation, fresh water, or waste water systems.

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Comments

Oldest comments listed first.

Posted by: Max on June 27, 2008 at 2:59 PM

Coils?

Is there a web page with more info on this project? Are the coils implemented with wirewound resistors? clever! :)

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Posted by: tim on June 27, 2008 at 3:13 PM

Yes, more details on construction would be wonderful!

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Posted by: Leareth on June 27, 2008 at 3:18 PM

Google is your friend (maybe)

A quick google and I found a video of the inventor Sam Redfield explaining it. At least I hope... I have no speakers at ye' work computer...

http://www.b20-biodiesel.net/Pico_hydro/videos.htm

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Posted by: Gareth Branwyn on June 27, 2008 at 3:22 PM

The folks who did are www.aidg.org. Couldn't find much in the way of tech specifics poking around their site (which doesn't mean it's not there).

There are more pics in their Flickr stream.

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Posted by: Anonymous on June 28, 2008 at 8:16 PM

Slick design, but you can only get so much energy out of low head-pressure and low mass-flow hydro -- I'd love to see the numbers.

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Posted by: Cat Laine on June 29, 2008 at 12:27 PM

A bit more info on the pico-hydro system from Sam

Hey folks,

Cat Laine from AIDG here. Sam wrote up some more info on the system here on our blog:
http://www.aidg.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,34/p,1136/

He's going to try to get me a parts list with some basic specs in the coming week. I'll post the link here when he does.

Cheers,

Cat

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Posted by: amanda on June 30, 2008 at 5:52 PM

None I know of

I've been trying to get to aidg.org's website, with not much success. "this account has been suspended." Doesn't always mean it has been, but...

Hope this comes back.

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