Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

New to this forum but have been reading a lot of great posts and replies!


I am fortunate enough to have a small stream running steadily and constantly through my land 24 hours a day 365 days a year.. and this got me thinking...


The stream is quite small; flowing 433 liters per second at a speed of 1.6m/s with a cross sectional area of 0.271m^2
It is a 'flat' run.. i.e no fall or head, but 400+ liters at 1.6m/s is a fair chunk of water running day and night, rain or shine and so I am investigating the possibility of capturing some of this kinetic energy and using it to run as much of a mining rig as possible.


Im planning on building a framed system that captures and directs the water into and through a 200mm tube, within which I shall house a trolling motor & propellor as a generator. (I need to do some practical tests to determine whether one large motor or n smaller motors work better)

I then plan to feed this power (im really hoping to capture about 1.5kw) into a small bank of 12v deep cycle batteries, and from the batteries, via some form of voltage stabilisation (to keep steady 12v) to what ever the current mining rig is that fits nicely under my (hopeful) 1.5kwh threshold - for discussion sake, lets assume an S9.



This is my plan so far, its a bit rough at the moment and will require further clarification following practical tests in the stream to determine how much of the streams kinetic energy can be captured

I would really very much appreciate any thoughts on this, potential problems, if anyone has done this sort of thing before, etc etc etc


There must be some energy I can capture from the stream and it seems a waste to just let it flow right by!


Thanks for your time! I look forward to hearing from you :)

For a quick order of magnitude calculation consider your system in reverse...  1.5kW, which is what you want to capture, is 2hp.  Do you know much water is pumped through a 2hp pump?  Way more than your stream, that is for sure.  So actual numbers might be interesting to know, but without way more head the amount of energy you can capture will not be anywhere near the 1.5kW you want.

Very interesting idea. I have watched youtube videos about stream power but I am not luckily enough to have a nearby stream. You may want to try another forum for hydropower design since we are mostly focused on crypto.

Please post pictures if you get something setup.   :D

I think there are probably better ways to capture the energy than you are planning, but it is a great idea.  If I had a stream on my property, I'd definitely be taking advantage.

Maybe a few "paddle" wheels one after the other with small generators on each can add up some power??

Thanks for the replies everyone!

VRobb:
Good way to think of it. I have no idea how much water is pumped by a 2hp pump but ill take your word for it! I may have to get creative and some how up the velocity of the flow somehow, or in some way introduce a head to the stream...

Oxfff:
Very true.. I shall work on capturing as much energy as possible from the stream via other sources of information and keep the mining side of things to forums such as this one



So... while I work on how to get the energy out of the stream.. what are peoples thoughts on running a mining rig off of a 12V battery system?
I have read online that the mining rigs will suffer due to the voltage slowly going down as the batteries are depleted (this rate of depletion will be offset by whatever energy i can pull out of the stream)

If i can get enough batteries (ignore recharging them for the minute) to provide the required amps, with some form of voltage stabilisation (i need to look into what exactly that might be) surely the miners dont care whether they see 12V 1300W from a battery or 12V 1300W from a PSU?

Im hoping that the miner will just be hooked directly (via V stabilisation) to the battery - i.e no 12V to 240V transformer, followed by a 12V PSU to step it back down again


Additionally.. should the batteries deplete and the voltage drop too low, the miners can be turned off in response to this low voltage... when the voltage comes back up again, the power can once again be directed to the miner... will the miner be able to just power up on its own and start mining as it was before turned off?
I suppose what im asking is: what happens to a miner when you have a power cut in your house? Its mining away just fine, power shuts off, then some time later the power comes back on.. does the miner just reboot and reestablish its connections and carry on mining? Might this depend on the model of the miner? I.e some can do this.. and others require human input?


Thankyou again!

Napkin math here.

433 liters per second is 433 kilograms. KE is 0.5*mass*velocity^2 = 0.5*433*1.6^2 = 554 Joules of Energy.

1 Joule = 1 Watt so your stream will produce 544 Watt of energy if you captured it 100%. Figure 75% effeciency, you are looking at 400 Watt of energy.

Basically you might be able to power 4 lightbulbs if you built a very complex system.

Not worth it. There is a reason why dams are built to house MILLIONS of tons of water and have it fall hundreds of feet before it hits turbines.