If Romans, and millers of the 16th and 17th centuries, could move water from source to where it was needed using stone and concrete, a bunch of geeks in the 21st century can. Canals and aqueducts would be the best way to move large amounts of water to where it is needed (ie water wheels, hydro stations) and require the least amount of exotic material (pipes etc.) You'd still use pipes to bridge gullies. The canal would only need to be 1m wide x 1m deep at most, but the volume of water it would move is huge.
Water wheels, water turbines, electric motors, internal combustion engines, steam engines and a horse chained to a windlass and walking in circles ALL provide rotational energy.
Hey yeah... you could build and line that with volcanic rock, which is pretty darn impervious!
Also, I read online somewhere about a guy who built a vertical axis water turbine that used a whirlpool like vortex affect... the drop on that was about 2 meters, and the 'chute' was only a metre deep by a couple wide I think. [the feed pool sorta looked like a cutaway diagram of a turbo]...
He got a constant 30 kilowatts off it. Which is enough for couple of houses.
So, imagine an aqueduct a meter deep by say 3 meters wide, and a couple of kilometers of long, feeding water from the lake in a spiraling circle around the island... and every 50 meters or so, a meter wide chute leading to a header pool and a vertical drop through one of those turbines, with pipe and cable feeds off to different houses [sorta a ring and spokes almost].
Water and power distribution, all in one go.
and since you'd need a continuous flow to keep the turbines spinning, you could do that by diverting some of the water to the house via a filtration and sterilization system as drinking water, the rest could flow under it, and out the other side into a contentiously cycling reed bed system, into which the black water waste empties. creating a waste management system. Which, come to think of it.. could also incorporate hydroponic farming as well. [why waste nutrients growing reeds, when you can grow crops instead?]
Viola! Complete start to finish water/waste/power system.
Rainwater is still the best source of drinking water. The canal would provide water for irrigation, toilets, animals and turbines.
If you build it properly, what you get is a long, very narrow lake that only flows when water is taken out at one end. It could be kept full by weirs across small rivers, very much like the canals in England. (see Horseshoe Falls in Llangollan)
Individual homesteads would have a small penstock (say 50mm to 80mm ABS pipe) running from the canal to the house, where a small Pelton hydro generator (http://www.rpc.com.au/pdf/hyd-200.pdf) would supply power, and the fall from the canal would give the house pressurized raw water.
In areas with a concentration of houses, multiple large (>100mm ABS pipe) penstocks could feed a large Pelton hydro station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelton_wheel) to generate bulk power. Hydro stations are a constant drain on the water supply, so a load monitoring system would shut down most of the penstocks in the big station, leaving just enough open to keep it "idling" during times of low load (eg at night)
By the way: Septic systems (http://www.biomax.com.au/products.htm) suitable to irrigation.
The only problem I see with the pelton design is that it needs a fairly high head, on the order of a minimum of 15 meters or better. That might not be possible for all applications...
I suspect that what will happen is a at first we'd deploy pre-built PV solar arrays, then build smaller applications like that one in the pdf file [if only because it's easily shipped out.] like you said, followed by a home built larger central pelton design utilising local materials. [in the story there's this mothballed airfield complete with an aircraft boneyard.] The final step in the story version of course would be to expand the pre-existing geo-thermal steam turbines.
I like the idea of tying the septic and irrigation systems together though.
I know, that's what gets me about all this talk about converting our tech base to non-oil dependent, non-polluting green tech. Those on the nay-saying side of the argument talk about having to develop new technologies... and yet, there's all this tech we already have that if applied the right way, could do the job.
Mind you, a zero-point energy system would be nice too!
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Geektopia idea
If Romans, and millers of the 16th and 17th centuries, could move water from source to where it was needed using stone and concrete, a bunch of geeks in the 21st century can. Canals and aqueducts would be the best way to move large amounts of water to where it is needed (ie water wheels, hydro stations) and require the least amount of exotic material (pipes etc.) You'd still use pipes to bridge gullies. The canal would only need to be 1m wide x 1m deep at most, but the volume of water it would move is huge.
Water wheels, water turbines, electric motors, internal combustion engines, steam engines and a horse chained to a windlass and walking in circles ALL provide rotational energy.
Re: Geektopia idea
Also, I read online somewhere about a guy who built a vertical axis water turbine that used a whirlpool like vortex affect... the drop on that was about 2 meters, and the 'chute' was only a metre deep by a couple wide I think. [the feed pool sorta looked like a cutaway diagram of a turbo]...
He got a constant 30 kilowatts off it. Which is enough for couple of houses.
So, imagine an aqueduct a meter deep by say 3 meters wide, and a couple of kilometers of long, feeding water from the lake in a spiraling circle around the island... and every 50 meters or so, a meter wide chute leading to a header pool and a vertical drop through one of those turbines, with pipe and cable feeds off to different houses [sorta a ring and spokes almost].
Water and power distribution, all in one go.
and since you'd need a continuous flow to keep the turbines spinning, you could do that by diverting some of the water to the house via a filtration and sterilization system as drinking water, the rest could flow under it, and out the other side into a contentiously cycling reed bed system, into which the black water waste empties. creating a waste management system. Which, come to think of it.. could also incorporate hydroponic farming as well. [why waste nutrients growing reeds, when you can grow crops instead?]
Viola! Complete start to finish water/waste/power system.
Re: Geektopia idea
If you build it properly, what you get is a long, very narrow lake that only flows when water is taken out at one end. It could be kept full by weirs across small rivers, very much like the canals in England. (see Horseshoe Falls in Llangollan)
Individual homesteads would have a small penstock (say 50mm to 80mm ABS pipe) running from the canal to the house, where a small Pelton hydro generator (http://www.rpc.com.au/pdf/hyd-200.pdf) would supply power, and the fall from the canal would give the house pressurized raw water.
In areas with a concentration of houses, multiple large (>100mm ABS pipe) penstocks could feed a large Pelton hydro station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelton_wheel) to generate bulk power. Hydro stations are a constant drain on the water supply, so a load monitoring system would shut down most of the penstocks in the big station, leaving just enough open to keep it "idling" during times of low load (eg at night)
By the way: Septic systems (http://www.biomax.com.au/products.htm) suitable to irrigation.
Re: Geektopia idea
I suspect that what will happen is a at first we'd deploy pre-built PV solar arrays, then build smaller applications like that one in the pdf file [if only because it's easily shipped out.] like you said, followed by a home built larger central pelton design utilising local materials. [in the story there's this mothballed airfield complete with an aircraft boneyard.] The final step in the story version of course would be to expand the pre-existing geo-thermal steam turbines.
I like the idea of tying the septic and irrigation systems together though.
Re: Geektopia idea
Re: Geektopia idea
and yet, there's all this tech we already have that if applied the right way, could do the job.
Mind you, a zero-point energy system would be nice too!
Re: Geektopia idea