(Author’s note: I’ve got some catching up to do. I hit two days which were so crazy-full that there was no time to write. Here goes.)
Right before the MechaniCrawl, my muse had just gotten back from a cross-country flight, so we’re ready for a day of rest and quiet relaxation. She’s finishing another knitting project. This one’s for her sister, but it looks really good on her as well.
So it was a quiet day at home. Remember the rule? Any time there’s a quiet day without many pictures, I unwrap another Secret Plan.
Secret Plan 118: Pressure Reducing Micro-Generator
Most houses have devices called pressure-reducing valves. They’re important for many reasons, and building codes require them on the interface from the water main. Additional pressure reduction is sometimes used to save water in the garden or shower.
…so the water that comes to your house is higher pressure than you need. Call it 100 psi (pounds per square inch). And let’s say you only need it to be 30 psi in your sink, shower, and garden hose.
What if we could use this pressure difference to generate electricity? First step is to find out how much energy we could get from it.
This pressure difference is effectively the same as two water tanks at different heights. If these two tanks physically existed, you can imagine that by water moving from one tank the other, you might generate some power.
This isn’t the device, just an illustration of where the energy would come from.
In this example, a typical family using 120 gallons of water in a day would get 60 watt-hours for free each day, or about enough to run a laptop computer for two or three hours.
That’s not huge, but free energy is pretty popular these days.
Random Assertion: Micro-generation ideas usually aren’t cost effective at first, but they also don’t cost much.
Steganographic data: 1862/1.4