Pump Up, Drain Down

I was looking at an interesting approach to micro-hydro power, which involves using solar-powered pumps to move water UP to a retention pond some distance up a hill, and then when you need electric power and it's cloudy or night, you run water from the up-pond to the down-pond. No, it's not terribly efficient, however, if you have the right terrain and the ability to cut a below-frost-line channel for the necessary piping, it's an interesting approach for micro-hydro.

It's also done on a HUGE scale for some hydro-electric generating stations, they take some of the excess grid energy capacity they have during low-need times to pump water back up into the reservoir and then during high-demand times, they just use the hydro power to supply the grid. It augments the natural fill rates for the systems.

it's nothing new. The electric demand swings, so such measures stores the energy so it can be used later when demands goes up. It also makes a more stable supply possible, because many of the alternative sources like solar and wind are not reliable enough for basic electricity. It takes to much time and energy to restart a conventional plant all the time.

Seems like you would lose a fair amount of energy along the way, but the one great thing is that you can eliminate the cost and maintenance of batteries as a storage medium.

Off-peak pumping to a retention pond, even one built above ground, to later get gravity flow, including through a mini-hydro generator is a common "battery" alternative on small farms and ranches. The pump is commonly powered by a windmill with elecrical power as a backup; solar is a new alternative. Often the goal is primarily to get the benefit of somewhat pressurized water without having to pump it.

I wonder if you could do something like this with compressed air ?

> The pump is commonly powered by a windmill

Pretty much every farm in America before WWII, and many during the Fifties in seriously rural areas. I lived on a farm with a windmill that pumped water up to a big tank on stilts, and that was our household water. We didn't use it to generate electricity, though - just drinking and washing.

Windmills and water pumps to holding tanks are a centuries old, known technology. I'd be interested in how efficient generating electricity from the flow of the water is.

Sounds very cool, and a bit more feasible than normal solar if you have the space but a lot of rain.

I hesitate to comment as I really have no facts/numbers or direct experience to offer, but rather an observation.

I don't think think you can assume such a system would be more cost-effective than simply charging a bank of 12 volt lead-acid batteries and then pulling the juice out after dark. I seems to me to be installation/scenario/design specific. At one end, if you just want to store enough power to get through the night, the pump up, drain down system seems very inefficient, but OTOH, if you can store a really large amount of water (big pond or lake size), you could have power for days or weeks, and maybe get to some sort of steady state of reliable power, daily power.

So I think the devil would be in the details of the specific installation/design/scenario, with the pump-up system having the ability to store larger amounts of potential power (water) cheaper if you have the space and water available.

Were you thinking of a specific scenario/application?

Instead of converting solar to electric to kinetic energy, with efficiency losses at each transition, you could use a home made hydraulic ram to raise the water to a holding pond. Kinetic to kinetic, gravity powered. These things were staples of the 1960's rural commune composting-toilet, solar-heating, organic farming crowd.

Like Nurse Mike I agree a ram pump Would be the way to go. After coming out of the turbine the energy that is left over could still be used to pump water up to the retention pond.

I think for a small home application like any of us would have it would be better to have batteries and also install a wind generator or 2 of them to work at night when your solar is down.


Lots of plans on the net for homemade wind generators.

I just read that someone had a breakthrough in hydrogen/oxygen electrolysis, and that this combined with a fuel cell might be the way to go for storing energy for nighttime electrical power:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html

One thing that isn't mentioned in this is that another use might be filling up your hydrogen powered car with solar generated hydrogen.

Looks like it takes a MIT genius to re-discover electrolysis. C'mon, we all did this in high school chemistry!

The ram pump is useful if you need to a little water to a higher level by using a lot of water flowing down to a lower level than the source. There's no point in ram-pumping water up to a higher level to then run a turbine - just put the turbine where the ram would have been, lower than the source.

Martin mentioned in other threads that he has a pond on his property, but I assume it is only fed by rain and there's no spring or stream running into it. I don't know if there's any "downhill" for him to use, either.

thseng The Idea is to put the ram pump at the output of the turbine not in place of it. It then pumps a portion that has already spun the turbine back up to the retention pond.You pump roughly 1/7 of the water back up.

Sure we did electrolysis in high school. But it took more energy to split the water than you could receive from then using the hydrogen as a fuel. What the professor is claiming is a breakthrough that people have been trying to do for quite a few years. The idea is to use a catalyst that requires less energy to split the water. With the right catalyst you can get out more energy out than you put in.

There is a really good reason a pump up-drain down system isn't used: transition losses. I used to have the actual current figures but just operating off memry the water ram system required four gallons of water through to pump one gallon up even on a well adjusted system. Using electric power to run a pump is something like only 25% efficient at best. And getting electricity back out through a turbine only 40%. So for every 100 watts you put in your getting ten out. (100w x .25 x .40 = 10w) Your losing 90% off your energy just in transitions. Ancillary losses, evaporation, friction and heat loss in transport, are going to a bit more after that.

Of course if you have a huge, and essentially free, initial energy source of an intermittent nature and no other way of storing energy to use on off times then over 90% loss could be quite acceptable.

A simple battery system, 12v to charger and battery bank to 12v use or inverter for AC loads, can get you much higher efficiencies.

Um, no, that would violate the second law of thermodynamics. But regular electrolysis is way inefficient, this makes it a lot more efficient.

Ok, this video actaully 'splains it a bit better than the press release that simply seems to be trying to cram in as many PC buzzwords as possible.

It seems he thinks he's found a more economical material for one of the electrodes. Traditionally, platinum is used for both electrodes but it is naturally very expensive. He doesn't seem to be claiming any efficiency improvements over platinum.

Anyway, drawing from the wind turbine thread, how about using a windmill to pump the water up?

Better catalyst= less energy. That's all.

I guess you can, at least on a large scale. See article here .