The nearby town of Bellefonte, PA features the Gamble Mill, an old mill originally used to grind grain into flour - 1800s hydropower. The mill dam, pond, millrace and tail race are still in place and functional. The mill building is now a restaurant (currently for sale), but all the water-works are owned by the borough. The municipal manager wants to put the system back to work as a small hydroelectric system to help supply the borough's electricity. Does this idea make sense? How much power could this system produce? The height difference between the mill race and the tailrace is ten feet (3 meters), and the stream can supply, on average, 100 cubic feet of water per second (2.8 m^3 / sec). The planned turbine would be 66% efficient under those conditions. Power (watts) = density of water * height * flow rate * acceleration of gravity * coefficient of efficiency NOTE: the coefficient of gravity is 9.81 for this problem
The nearby town of Bellefonte, PA features the Gamble Mill, an old mill originally used to grind grain into flour - 1800s hydropower. The mill dam, pond, millrace and tail race are still in place and functional. The mill building is now a restaurant (currently for sale), but all the water-works are owned by the borough. The municipal manager wants to put the system back to work as a small hydroelectric system to help supply the borough's electricity. Does this idea make sense? How much power could this system produce?
The height difference between the mill race and the tailrace is ten feet (3 meters), and the stream can supply, on average, 100 cubic feet of water per second (2.8 m^3 / sec). The planned turbine would be 66% efficient under those conditions. Power (watts) = density of water * height * flow rate * acceleration of gravity * coefficient of efficiency
NOTE: the coefficient of gravity is 9.81 for this problem
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