Generating Hydro Power from Urban Water System

[stephendavion]

I learned here that this technology is called " Flow-to-Power" and was created by New York based company Rentricity. Isn't it a wonderful concept? Daily millions gallons of high pressure water will be flows in water system. They are capturing the pressure from water to generate the power.

I like this concept ... hope it gives nice fruitful result ....

[clv101]

I'm fairly unconvinced. For the most part, the water is only flowing quickly, at high pressure, thanks to the energy added to it by the pumps. I expect there isn't a lot of 'spare' energy to be extracted. If there was spare, it would be more efficient to turn the pumps down rather than extract some of it after the event!

[kenneal - lagger]

It would only work if you had a high head water supply, e.g. a dam high in the mountains, which didn't require pumping. It wouldn't work at all in most of south east UK where water is pumped from underground aquifers.

It might work for some Welsh and Scottish suppliers and some in the Pennines. I don't think thee would be a lot of power available though and it would be very intermittent: morning and evening peaks with smaller peaks during the adverts in popular TV shows.

[adam2]

Agree, might be useful in some relatively rare situations when water is supplied by gravity at a higher pressure than needed.
Might as well use a turbine to reduce the pressure and produce electricity in such cases.

Not applicable to most UK water supplies.