Hydroelectric Generation from Water Pipelines of Buildings

Abstract

Hydropower generation systems are one of the common renewable energy sources in the world. This paper presents the development of a hydroelectric generating system that generates electricity from the potential energy of water flowing inside building’s water pipelines through converting the kinetic energy of water into electrical energy that can be stored in batteries to be used as power supply for LED lighting, network routers, and for charging mobile phones. The developed system is inline hydroelectric generator designed for small sized pipes (0.5 to 1 inch). It contains a turbine that rotates by the running water in these pipelines to generate the electricity and a charging circuit to store the generated electricity into battery cell. It also contains a monitor and control unit to control the whole operation of the system, and measure and display the amount of water flow, the amount of electricity generated, and the daily consumed energy. By increasing the flowing of water, the rotation of the turbine will be increased and the amount of generated electricity will be increased. Therefore, the idea of this proposed system can also be applied on a wider scale so that this system with big turbine can be connected with municipal water pipelines, which ensures greater flow of water and generating more energy that can be used for road lighting and other uses. The results show that the proposed hydroelectric generator can harness the untapped kinetic energy of water flowing inside the pipelines and produce power around 10 W when the velocity of water flow is more than 3.5 l/min which is enough to operate continuously and safely the low-power electrical devices (mobile phones, LED lights, and network routers).