The Tesla turbine. Genius!

[Ken07AOVette]

if you take a turbine and run it from the water line just after your meter, every time you wash dishes, use the dish washer, have a shower, water the lawn you can extract free power.

Imagine the power that could be generated at every hotel and office with a thousand sinks and toilets.

What a brilliant idea.

[Arty]

if you take a turbine and run it from the water line just after your meter, every time you wash dishes, use the dish washer, have a shower, water the lawn you can extract free power.

Imagine the power that could be generated at every hotel and office with a thousand sinks and toilets.

What a brilliant idea.

Uh huh. The power isn't free, and extracting the energy leaves you with less pressure and/or velocity downstream to take your shower or whatever. First law of thermodynamics and all that.

Of course, you could set up a small ABSA boiler fueled by stoker coal, piped to an Elliot turbine connected to a synchronous generator for power, and run the waste steam to radiators in your house. That'd work.

[Ken07AOVette]

uh huh do you honestly think the 8" pressure line into hotels and industrial buildings would even notice a small turbine? They could fill a reservoir and run it gravity, but whatever I would bet we start seeing more brilliant ideas like this as the energy race continues and builds

[Hawkeye]

We just had a bathroom renovated and had a really nice shower controller installed. It has built in LED lights and an electronic display of shower water temperature and the duration of the shower, all run by a turbine. When I was looking at it prior to installation, I could see the wires, but no hookup and I quickly deduced that it had to be a turbine.

[Ken07AOVette]

That's cool hawkeye!

Did you notice a huge drop in pressure while showering?

[Arty]

uh huh do you honestly think the 8" pressure line into hotels and industrial buildings would even notice a small turbine? They could fill a reservoir and run it gravity, but whatever I would bet we start seeing more brilliant ideas like this as the energy race continues and builds

It's a lot cheaper to extend an electrical circuit a little bit for auxiliary power in a room for any meaningful amount of power, than tying in a mechanical device there that in turn has to be set up to generate power.

Taking power off of plant steam circuits or gas pipelines to power turbines for remote mechanical or even electrical energy has been done for a long time. But there has to be a good reason to do it, and incur all the extra trouble and capex and maintenance expense.

[Hawkeye]

Have not noticed reduced pressure.
The water drops from 50 plastic 'pegs' that look like those you stick into a Lite Brite toy.

The controller unit is brushed steel, roughly 10 inches wide and 4 feet high on the wall, with the shower unit attached at an upward angle and extending about 2 feet from the wall.

works like a charm!

That's cool hawkeye!

Did you notice a huge drop in pressure while showering?

[Arty]

We just had a bathroom renovated and had a really nice shower controller installed. It has built in LED lights and an electronic display of shower water temperature and the duration of the shower, all run by a turbine. When I was looking at it prior to installation, I could see the wires, but no hookup and I quickly deduced that it had to be a turbine.

Makes more sense to do that for a few milliamps of instrument power than changing batteries every few months. Assuming the turbine has a quarter-century service life or better.

Installing battery-power static thermostats and things like lithium battery paper towel dispensers in an electrified building is ridiculous, when another circuit that is good forever could be run. Of course, if you start instrumenting consumption-monitoring and control points then the data has greatest use collected centrally over time and analyzed for trends and costs etc. Then installation of 4-20mA twisted pair carrying both power and data to/from a PLC starts to make more sense.

[ChrisGrohms]

I liken generating power from incoming water flow from the city to generating power from the energy in a tire going around and around while doing 60mph. Yes you can harness some of that energy but it had to of been created some where upstream.
There are some pretty cool turbine systems for small creeks that allow a person to get off grid and have a truly constant power source.

[Off in the Bushes]

uh huh do you honestly think the 8" pressure line into hotels and industrial buildings would even notice a small turbine? They could fill a reservoir and run it gravity, but whatever I would bet we start seeing more brilliant ideas like this as the energy race continues and builds

The water pressure was created by the town/city. In industrial building and hotels how do you think the water gets to the 5th floor it has to be boosted by a pump. So why would you go from mechanical energy to electrical energy only to use the electrical energy again, after suffering all the loses in the conversion of the energy.
Maybe on hotel effluent water from the upper floors it might work as you can convert gravitational energy into mechanical and then electrical energy.

[EZM]

Assuming this is an inline physical turbine I would fear this would be one more thing to clog up the lines ..... I'd wait until my neighbors tried it out first before I jump in feet first into this one.:)