Small water wheel to produce electricity? Is it possible?

[hopeso]

As I am never surprised by the knowledge and expertise on here could someone point me in the right direction.

We have a small shuck (a run off waterway from fields) running down the side of our property, which is currently running full what with all the rain we have had recently. It does tend to dry up during the summer months but it runs for more than half of any year.
It seems such a waste of all this water power to not harness it in some way but obviously on a very small scale.
So where can I find a small waterwheel to connect to an alternator and what could I expect power wise out of it?
I am a complete numpty about electrical engineering but I'm sure it's been done plenty of times but I can't find any YouTube video's telling me just how to do it and what can be powered from it.

As the water flow is stronger during the winter I would expect to be able to run a couple of outside lights perhaps from a battery topped up by the waterwheel.

Ano ideas please?

[dodgerover]

Have a watch of this video


Should be possible to run a small wheel as it looks like you have a small wier already?

[hopeso]

Cheers for that. Gives me something to look into.

[perf]

Sorry about language
24volt.eu/vattenhjul.php

[wildrover]

Perhaps this may seem a little alarmist, which is not my intention... but, riparian or, water rights, are a curious thing. I am by no means an expert on UK riparian rights but here are a couple of article that I found doing a quick Google search - worth a read, even just out of curiosity.

www.birketts.co.uk/legal-update/know-your-riparian-rights/
www.stephens-scown.co.uk/property-disputes/properties-next-to-water-riparian-rights-and-liabilities/

I for one would be interested to see how your project panned out but, not if it means that some small minded person were to take issue with your fun.

[toolbagted]

Check out Kris Harbour on you tube he design's and builds hydro power units. Also Google stream engines.

[rattlecan]

Dec 31, 2022 7:22:40 GMT toolbagted said:

Check out Kris Harbour on you tube he design's and builds hydro power units. Also Google stream engines.

I was just about to say the same guy. He built a lovely house & many other things 👍🏼

[igor]

My wife's grandfather did something like this early last century. Pretty sure the house he built was the first in the remote area where they lived to have electric lighting.

[dodgerover]

Jan 1, 2023 2:32:05 GMT igor said:

My wife's grandfather did something like this early last century. Pretty sure the house he built was the first in the remote area where they lived to have electric lighting.

He's not the fella who was using fence line rather than copper to carry the current to the house was he? We went round a farm in NZ that had been powered pretty much entirely by water. The original owner sounded like somebody I would have liked to have talked with.

[flyingphil]

The basic formula is mgh ie the Potential Energy of your water supply and I suspect from your picture that you may well have a reasonable Mass m of water but not much h ie height difference from where your highest water point is to your lowest water outlet.
Thus the actual amount of electrical energy will be quite small even with an efficient conversion. Maybe enough for some LED lights but, without some real data for your situation, it is impossible to give more information.
The NZ site looked to be on a hillside, so an h of 100+ m - there was a good conversion of mgh to 1/2mv sqd (KE) of the water for the Pelton Wheel turbine.