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I am trying to engineer a simple (cheap!) solution to allow me to automate & remotely control my hydro-electic turbine. Basically I have a system where I can easily produce more electricity than I need through the combination of hydro power and solar. I have no way to easily "dump" excess electric on really sunny days when my batteries are full, so I tend to walk the 200m down the field and manually turn off the 2 ball valves to the turbine. However, if I were to forget or it would need doing when away from home this is an incovenience that can potentially cause the bearings on the pelton wheel to self destruct as they go into free-spin when the electrical load is removed.
My charge controller or inverter can be set to operate a relay when certain parameters are met (probably battery voltage or battery state of charge) which I can easily set to simply turn on an immersion heater or electric heater. But this seems a waste and the turbine is still operating and gradually wearing itself out unnecessarily. I feel a more elegant solution would be to use the relay trigger function to somehow send a signal remotely the 250m to the turbine and use it to operate some 12V valves (running off a solar powered battery like an electric fence), that simply shuts off the water supply. I would like to further set up a float valve in the header tank that feeds the turbine so that if it falls below a set level that will also close the vales. This is about 400m from the turbine and has no electricity (hence Lorawan sensor??).
I am pretty sure I could cobble something together using remote control aircraft servos or such like but surely in this day and age there is a simple elegant solution that I simply haven't come across....
Over to the STW experts
PS. Don't ask why I simply don't sell excess to the grid. That is NOT an option.
PPS Long term I will probably switch to an electric range cooker in the kitchen which should easily use all power produced. But would still like to be able to remotely control the turbine valves by some means.
Bump for the evning crowd??
Presumably it's not connected to the grid? Run the immersion heater. Doesn't seem particularly wasteful to me.
I wouldn't be bothered if it was my system. If there's nothing to supply then it won't be under any load. I doubt it'll have any meaningful impact on bearing life provided they're properly maintained in the first place. At least if they're always spinning they can't rust.
Bump for the evning crowd??
Couldn't post the other night, but may have exactly what you need. Just back off holiday, so give me a day, or so to check if I've still got it - it was originally for remote operation of a drain valve (electronics only, no mechanicals - 'James Bond villain' style box with a large push button on it.)
I use Siemens LOGO for this type of low end remote automation - various communication methods (GSM, Wifi etc).
However I dont know of cost comparison to home automation type stuff.
Personally I'd dump the excess energy into spinning up a massive full size replica of a 1980's Evil Knivel stunt cycle before launching it over the hills
I’m a big fan of DIY IOT devices built using cheap ESP32 microcontrollers running ESPhome (open source firmware project).
My estate is not quite so expansive so not had need to try it out yet, but I believe some boffin has got LoRa working on it in the last couple of weeks. An ESP32 SX1262 LoRa is under a fiver on AliExpress I think!
ESPhome is a learning curve but it’s not rocket science (I can do it lol)
Just fyi, saw this on eBay, no idea if it’s any good (*but the cheap leccy bits I e got have all worked, but nothing like that range )