Due to popular demand, there's now a Quint BUILDs Discord server! Details on accessing it can be found on my Patreon page. If you want to discuss projects with my input, that's the best place to go. Yes, you've gotta become a patron of the channel to use it but that's the best way I know to keep it clean and useful. Hope to see you there! If you liked this content and want to support more of it the best thing you can do is join my super awesome Patreon supporters who made this video possible. To become one of them visit: https://www.patreon.com/QuintBUILDs If instead you prefer a one-time donation option, here's a PayPal address you can use: BUILD2LRN@GMAIL.COM Videos mentioned: BUILDing the Alternator https://youtu.be/YLb4enCgnP4 Charging Station Electrical https://youtu.be/amu5LJaDUPY 2nd Channel with engineering and coaching to help you learn: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOEy... Video from 2nd channel on Pumped Storage: https://youtu.be/LtD_pJBZIWw Quint's Background: https://youtu.be/oqES86u8eTc

Awesome project! I've been thinking about something like this for ages. Have you considered using capillary action to move the water up and then send it back down into the reservoir when generating power with it?

okay, so a typical smartphone battery holds 41,000 joules or 3 times the energy that you have here. Would you consider putting 4 more of these on your roof for science? We already know that the math checks out but perhaps this would demonstrate the efficiency superiority of water storage compared to batteries. A good science experiment would be to power a cell phone directly to this without a battery and time how long it lasts for. With your current setup you would expect it to run 3 times lessor in time with 14,000 joules then with the 41,000 joules the cell phone battery would allow. But perhaps this is enough time to power it up and make a phone call or send a text message and there is always the possibility that you can throttle down and the cell phone would still work at say 4 volts buying you more time.

@@TheBowersj I like where your head is at. I'd need to dramatically increase the efficiency of my generator first. I think I was only getting 40% from the rain gutter!

You know... if you replaced the water with mercury, you'd have the equivalent of *14* AA batteries! :grin:

Bit of an issue in earthquake country. Maybe add a quick release for all that water if a quake is detected? :)

That was really cool! Thank you!

Wow, thank YOU Zack! 👍

Lets zack rig it!! Hahaha

@@QuintBUILDs I love what you're doing and I have been following it for a while now and I must say that while you have done incredibly well I think you can actually get more power than you even realize out of your water system... Your pelton wheel setup has a fair amount of efficiency. Some say the Tesla turbine is more efficient or is it? Could you print up a Tesla turbine on your 3D printer and then hook it up to see if it could spin your little generator faster and produce more voltage?

It's not cool, it's really hot!

The tiny pipe is restricting flow and potential for pressure. Normally for microhydro we need to jet the water out to increase impact on the impeller. We also start with larger pipes and funnel down to smaller pipes. Also we will use up to 4 nozzles on the impeller, so a larger pipe splitting off to the 4 jets.

You could just use a venturi system with 1 pipe? Keep quiet

@@no-knot9567 multiple nozzles help reduce wear on the equipment by dividing the velocity between more than one nozzle.

kind of where my mind was at. I was pretty sure you could get a lot more juice out of that barrel, with enough pressure. I saw a few old turbine systems which ran with PVC off a river that wasnt going that quickly and they generated enough power off that system and river for a small neighborhood.

There's not much point to any of it though. A tonne of water will only provide 100 watts for say 1½ minutes sitting on roof. More if it's hundred metres high of course.

Would be cool to see a series where these concepts are put into real life use in say an off grid living environment, aka a cabin homestead.

It would still require a lake on top of a hill and a lake down the hill to power your house through the night. For example if you have one lake that's 50m*50m*5m(or around 5 Olympic swimming pools) and the same lake(or another 5 pools) on a 30m hill(the height of a 10 story building), *assuming perfect efficiency*, you'd have a battery with a WHOAPPING 1kWh capacity. That's one, medium sized car battery 😐.

There are tons of DIY hydropower videos

Imagine... if our schools had teachers like this

Don't need teachers what's stopping you for doing your own research or going public libraries which are free? Information is out there you just have to motivate yourself to get it.

If there were public school educators with this kind of passion for projects and exemplary lay for foundations in relative relationships. With "objects achieving action by ordinary efforts" (OAABOE); studying this use of ratios/conversion, formula building, ect, makes math more living along with you instead of living in a text book. I'd have taken [€×π√5(¶×∆^Nth)] shits off a rats ass what any of pathagos and his Greco/ Aramaic cohorts we're calculating. This is the kind of example that kids should build out of shop class for their final graduating exam because it's about as real to the world from the class as it gets here. P.s. my formula for basic bs is idk 😶 I just threw something that looked like multiplicative af downtown 👇 for the free throw.

all the academic mandates and restrictions put on teachers constrain their ability to teach what they are passionate about and are forced into teaching the way the school board has deemed 'most efficient' for their curriculum.

Our country would be in even worse shape, lmao A system like this isn't very efficient at all. Having a solar-water heater is a better use of resources.

This is awesome, I love videos like this, no matter how little the energy result is it’s still amazing to learn about mechanical design and what not, thanks for the video!

I cannot express to you how much I appreciate your fax paws.. trials and errors, troubleshooting... obstacles and learning from this!!! And involving your children in the education, I love it I love it💜💜💜💜 TY

I can imagine the neighbors. “He’s up on the roof again!”

Yeah Mrs Kravits

They already say that... I don't have solar yet...

Lol!

He is a neighbor I want. I would be is humble apprentice.

lol but its so cool, so much low hanging eco-fruit

Have you ever considered using a ram-pump inline with water flow for pumping the water back to the roof?

I enjoyed this immensely; thank you for putting the time in to educate on this topic in such an entertaining way, I love how you tied this to future and existing grid storage! The cloaking device was really neat too!

You explain things so well. What an awesome video and wonderful project.

Excellent project! I make that just under 4 watt-hours of power - enough to light your table light for four hours. There are several improvements you could make to this system. The solar panel is capable of producing a lot more energy so the excess should then be diverted to charging rechargeable batteries. The closed water system should be open to rainwater input - with overflow directed to charging batteries and further downstream being discharged to watering the garden via a planned irrigation system.

A tip for the pump @4:10 You can just seal off the contacts and leave it in water. It solves 2 problems, noise and over heating. No heatsing needed.

Years ago I calculated that I'd need to suspend a volume of concrete that had the same square footage as my home and 9ft tall, over 35 feet in the air to have enough potential energy to power my home for a day. That quickly destroyed all ambitions I had of using potential energy as a means of energy storage.

Your expectations were low and your ambitions not strong enough. It is not doable by most people, but for those who have the space and slope to make a water reservoir for energy storage, it by no means destroys their dreams. The cost and space involved usually pay-off for those with more cash and land in their possession, especially for a government.

@@UserName-cb6jz The vast majority of people with the land and cash who wish to have energy storage will still opt for $300/kW-hr batteries over potential energy storage and use their two ponds/reservoirs for fish, and not risk liability of hundreds of tons of solid material suspended or on a grade.

there's always the flywheel, have you looked into any of the commercial models that are already available?

use sand

Thanks, apparently someone was needed to point out how terribly inefficient potential energy is, because people here simply choose to believe what they want.

That was a fun and fascinating way to learn a little something I never thought of. Perfect for young, curious minds (and old ones like mine). Keep up the great work!

This is incredible. You are a fantastic teacher, really inspiring stuff. Thank you. Now to watch some more.

This is absolutely incredible! Well done.

Fun video looked at this a couple of years back as Solar sucks when you factor in battery costs.Like the analogy with the battery if you lived on farmland with an elevated lake you could run a hydro electric and return water via solar .Ideally you have a fast flowing river :) Keep up the good work my kids love these videos very educational thanks

Hi. Great video. To store energía on your roof there is a better idea that it is allready implemented. You take a big black metal box with black tubes in it and conect one end to your water pipe and the oder end to the upper side of the reservoir, the warm water will rise up into the reservour automatically and it will keep getting warmer ,under the reservoir you conect your hot pipe into the house,now you can shower free energy most of the year. Heating water is one of the most cost effective energy consumption.

Just to put into perspective, the 14.200 Joules you calculated at 2:27 are equal to 3.94 (lets round it to 4) Watts-hour of energy... That is roughly the energy stored on SINGLE alkaline AA battery (around 2.5Ah times 1.5V), or about a quarter of the energy stored on an average mobile phone li-ion battery (around 16Wh). For me is mind blowing just how SMALL is the energy stored in form of potential energy when compared to the methods we are used to every day.

It's amazing that a single AA battery can power the pump long or hard enough to lift this amount of water 7 meters high.

And you did not even count the *huge* amount of energy already needed to build this setup, or the one the owner will need to spend, for maintaining it.

And that's only calculating the amount of potential energy stored, not how much energy it's going to take to pump it up there, since no pump is 100% efficient, nor how much of that potential energy is going to be wasted when you try to covert it back to electricity, because no water turbine is 100% efficient. this project is an incredible waste of time.

Also its near to muzzle energy of .50 cal bullet

Amazing video. Everyone saying it was a waste of material, cost, and time, apparently failed to watch the last minute where he explains the benefits of a hands-on learning experience— he’s fully aware of the benefits of batteries as orders of magnitude more efficient. Again, really cool video!

100% well said. It's the journey, not the destination. He's done the work, so I don't have to!

my problem is not really that it was a waste of time and materials just by it self, my problem is that it was because of him not doing at least a minimum of research on how to get energy from water, i am doctor, i have nothing to do with energy producion, but even i know that estarting from bigger pipes to smaller at the end will encrease presure by a LOT and that if he splits it in 4 or even 6 he can power 6 turbines at the same time with more efeciency, even then it would'nt have been worth it but at least it would be ussefull and less . . . dissapointing(?

​@@josue1996jcIm sure he knows these things and calculated the maximum theoretically power output and he knew that this will not be efficient enough for a real scenario. You can see that he simply likes to build things - its always a learning process, even if you think you know all - and it is fun.

1:18 The reason why the full jug was destroyed so much more was also because water is near incompressible, unlike air. That makes the jug more rigid on impact and thus the energy is dissipated on a much smaller area. Of course the increased mass is also a huge factor in the grade of destruction of the jug.

this is great as always!! thank you for sharing. how long does it take until the upper barrel is completely empty if you are using the full 1 Watt power? are we talking about some hours here? keep it up. greetings from germany - we love your videos!

12:30 I really love the precision about the difference between ENERGY and POWER.... and I love the way I came to your video just the day after I said to myself: "Hum, think about it: energy is a storage and power is about time... because it is how fast you use energy" And today, I can finally add this: time is about resistance. Here (in your video) the time depends on how large the valve is opened. The more it is opened, the more water can escape the tank per unit of time... because of the resistance of the tube and valve (making the water not to escape the tank). The more resistance, the more time it takes to let something to happen. So, power being "how fast we use energy"... it is also true that power is how few resistance there is for energy to manifest. And I'm not even speaking about political stuff! The less resistance, the more power. For example, LEDs use a less resistant way to produce light than filament bulbs. With the same energy storage, you can then use LEDs and produce a strong light or use bulbs (using the same voltage) and produce a less visible light. That's why it is important to design less resistant stuff to increase power. Anyway... Really nice project. Thanks for your sharing!

I’m an electrician and love this, solar really is great

This is brilliant! I love to see a father teaching his passion to his kids. Keep up the good work!

This is a kind of teacher we need in schools not this woke bulk crap we got now that is completely useless and detrimental

I thought the same, that's fantastic!!

yeah true. his son seems excited, but daughter seems bored. she probably ends up being a tiktoker in the future.

Great video, subbed! On the picture of the Swan Lake Energy Storage, I assume that there are two pipes running side-by-side, one for flowing down hill and one (probably smaller in diameter) for being pumped uphill! A tower with a small tank just to the left of the lower pond but at least ten feet higher in elevation than the rim of the second pond would reduce the energy needed to pump the water back uphill because water (and most fluids) will always find its own level! The Romans used a similar system with their aqueducts to move water across steep ravines, still works today!

For better energy storage you should use denser materials like - neutron stars. However, it could be challenging for the structure of the house. 😉

😂

Great work! ...You have the determination ,equipment (and money) to execute what I must relegate to conjectures.

It is really informative that you were able to give us a clear figure: "( 1 barrell of stored water in the roof = 1 AA Battery. ) I always wondered what the DIY equivalent was to hydropower reservoirs. Hydropower is only usefull for home owners when they have a big land plot with streaming water. Pumping up to store energy and then release it, it's only efficient enough when talking about huge water reservoirs. Thanks for helping my curiosity.

This is like a mini system that lots of people use with modified washing machines to create 24 volts from stream power and then through a converter to 120 220 or whatever you need. There’s lots of vids on YouTube

I like this guy! I’m thinking if I were his kid, growing up with him how much fun and interesting my life would be. He probably knows deep down the example he’s setting , but even moreso he’s a “doer” and the benefit for his kids is great! Imagine the stories his kids will tell about their Dad to their kids… lol.

I totally agree, but there is no such thing as a perfect dad. There will be a point when everyone at home starts wishing they had a normal dad who buys a regular water pump like everyone else, someone who can provide some good stock advice to the kids, sits around with the family and have casual conversations about regular stuff which makes the wife feel that he actually cares more for the family than his stupid science experiments all the time. 🍷🤷🏻‍♀️

He can be both! My mother is like this! I don’t want her to be “normal”! And my gf is not “normal”, she is painting and also telling awesome jokes, and also working and blushing like a child. I really don’t know what you mean by getting a normal pump, well you can buy everything you want nowadays, even a tank or an airplane. It just does not make sense for me to renounce your hobby to make your kids feel like “normal” ones. Well, they can be normal - play videogames, go to gym, fart like elephants, eat pop-corn and listen to funk or whatever is popular, why can’t they do that because of my hobby??

What a cool channel. I wish I had time to do projects like this with my kids. They are 2 and 5 so a bit young yet but when they get a bit older I am going to make the time. Your kids must love these projects. #CrazyMadScientistDad

Interesting. I've wanted to build a gravity generator . Water is great idea but for me a solid weight with pulley ,gears with flywheel is direction I'm going. STORING WATER MAY BE BETTER FOR OTHER REASONS . This is Great show, Great idea . Thank You

You could supplement the solar pump by adding a ram pump from a nearby water source. Could help for cloudy days, plus would be adding water all night too.

Water is easy to deal with, but there is 'resistance' to the flow in the hose. Another way is to use a pole and lift a weight on it using just a screw from a motor-generator and then you can use heavier material, like lead (say from lead-acid batteries...and store the energy in them too until their wear out)

Thank you, sir, for this incredible stories of practical power engineering! Btw, have you tried to install something similar to Mr.Tesla turbine instead of a simple water-mill wheel to drive the electric generator?

You are an AMAZING Dad to involve your children in your science experiments. This is how you create little scientists which will change their lives (for the better) forever. Great job, dude.

That is the most interesting part for me. It is awesome

Somewhere he needs to teach his kids to think. He's gone to great trouble to solve a problem. If he did the math he could show them it's not worth solving. They say you can't fix stupid. I disagree. If you can create stupid (i.e. teach it), you can fix it.

*little discerning thinkers

The project would be worth doing if only to involve the kids in a learning / thinking experiment that they could enjoy with their dad. Too many so called parents don't spend time with their children, much less take time to teach their kids something useful. Which is why we see so many single parent (ignored or forgotten) kids turn into criminals, as opposed to kids with both parents in the home succeed in the very same neighborhoods.

Love it! Enjoyable and fun learning. Well done Sir.

Love this - in New Zealand currently there’s talk of creating a mega battery out of Lake Onslow - 5TWh worth of storage apparently - I’d say massively distributed micro batteries like yours look more doable!

Micro is right, this stores less than 2 AA batteries worth of energy.

@@TheGerm24 It could be easily upgraded to more, by using a more powerful pump and turbine, with more water available...but one would need to have a very strong support for the water at the higher elevation.

I have always wondered if it is possible to use a rampump on downspouts to put water into a higher tnk during a rainstorm.Then possibly later while using the water produce power from a small hydrogenerator in the output line to charge batteries. A backup for solar and wind on those less than optimal days.

Super cool gravity battery! Been waiting to see more of these. IMO it would be even more efficient long term if you had a way to charge it by hand

Still astonished this setup is equivalent to a AA battery. Props to the AA

I would never want to wearout my welcome... Though you would be a fun neighbor to have!! To bring this together, all right under your own roof..love it!!

I'm absolutely amazed that the tiny pump can actually move water to that height.

I concur. Pond and fountain pumps can barely do 8 feet

It's probably a diaphram pump. Low flow high pressure. Tipically pond pump use an open rotor centrifugal impeller. Centrifugal pumps require lots of power and lots of flow to have a decent amount of pressure.

The pumps I bought last summer to build swamp coolers only lifted 22 inches-non returnable. Yes U would love to know what his pump was.

A Sequoia can do the same up to 100 m. A FUCKING TREE!

The magic of airless capilarity

I was reading about this variant of the lithium ion battery with a liquid electrolyte and a solid anode and cathode. The electrolyte is stored in large tanks and is pumped around. The tanks (and capacity) can get as large as you can store safely.

That will create a lot of road hogs.

I had an idea similar to this a long time ago, put a glass tank on the ground full of water, connected to a tank on the roof, let the sunshine heat up the water and evaporate, and then condense on the roof.

It is not plausible. First the heat from sun (without focusing it) will be too low to boil it, so at best you will get miniscule amount of water. Second, adding solar panel or focal lenses to heat up the water will be plausible but this will become distillation and the water you obtain from it will be much more precious as it is very pure and can be drinkable. So, people will use this to obtain precious drinking water than to generate tiny amount of electricity (like what this video described).

Love this project! Not entirely practical and I'm glad you gave people the warning not to put a 200 lb water reservoir on their roof willy-nilly! Lots of people pointed out some issues with this setup, and I'll add mine here: listening to all that water flow, I had to go to the bathroom three times watching this video!

From the information you gave I can increase your efficiency by 6.5% by using a string to run a switch close by the motor rather than running wire clear up to the roof. Changing over to a different impeller for your water will make a big difference and also going to a brushless generator the three phase and using a diode to make what you need. I believe you can easily double your efficiency right now just from what I've said.

I am actually shocked that all that potential energy (14kJ) only equates to 4Wh. My guess would have been around 1kWh. You really need A LOT of water (or height) for 1kWh. Crazy that a Tesla holds around 75,000Wh... and a gasoline car holds 4x the energy of what a Tesla does. Great video!

What a superb example of how to do an educational YouTube video. No messing about, straight into the build with no patronising despite explaining everything clearly. Best of all, you didn't use 10 words where 1 word would do! Makes for great watching, thank you!

I'd love to see you guys try using a compressed air tank to generate the potential instead of gravity. You could get a big ol tank in your yard instead of on your roof, make it air-tight, then pump the water (or air?) in and then drain off water to generate power! You could even have your kids check the increase in temp and pressure so they could calculate the storage figures!

Since water is a non-compressible fluid, I don't think it would work very well! The higher the PSI you make the air in a tank, the more energy is required reducing efficiency!

When he said 14 kj of energy I was like neat now you just need to build 2000 containers more to power your house through the night (nice clarification of the power at the end).

I just figured out why you did not upscale it to a water turbine. You would have to cover the entire roof in water storage. Great video though!

You could collect the rain water directly from roof by mounting a number of more discrete collectors above the gutters, maybe with some architectural trim to integrate with the roof or eaves. Similarly, a reservoir that runs the length of the roof, sitting at the peak, would maintain the stored gravitational kinetic potential energy. This would require more investment in design and construction, but would reduce pumping energy (i.e.., changing from ground level to eaves/gutter elevation) A pump at each downspout position could allow for multiple "cellular" compartmentalized storage chambers along the roof ridge, so one failure doesn't have to mean the entire system were lost. You can also purchase food-grade 50gallon barrels to collect rainwater at your downspouts.

It depends how often it rains. It would more effectively convert rain into power, but it would also lead to the system having problems with evaporation.

I think it'd be interesting to try and pump 55 gallons up to your roof using a single AA.

Yikes hehe

I think it would work. But only for a little…maybe a fourth of the way? The solar panel may have the same amount of power as the battery but can last as long as the sun is out. So, still would be interesting though!

@@ezrarichardson279 I agree, you would need a very efficient pump and something like a very efficient joule thief, and even then you'd still probably only get about halfway there due to things like friction in the hose and pump.

18650 would be able to do it. LiFePO4 battery would be able to do it for ten years every day.

its only efficient when using huge amount of water to turn on a 1000w motor

This is a truly amazing project to do with kids. I am planning to have about 2000ltrs on top of my home soon. I may plan something like this for educational purposes. 😇

Just found you channel. 20 seconds in, I'm like "My mans got some Bill Nye vibes." by the time the water bottle hit the ground you had your sub. Keep following your instincts when it comes to growing your channel. No way you don't blow up. Cheers. 🍻

Great project! Future thinking for sure. Canary Islands tried something like this at scale years ago. Continuous power with renewable is so practical

this is so cool, such a great idea i realy think we should implement more of these in power stations

unfortunately these types of solutions don't scale up well, but they're very cool for small scale storage.

I had almost this same idea decades ago, I'm just lazy and poor :) Except in my idea, instead of solar powered, there were vertical windmills running Archimedean screws in a zig zag wall to raise the water.

I love how you bring your family into your experiments and builds! Your kids are going to remember this for a lifetime :)

They will and their children's children will be able to experience this aswell because the battery should last a very very long time!

Very interesting. The concept seems simple enough and I think it’s a great idea. Since your clever I bet you could figure out a system to power that system off of wood gas, wouldn’t even need fuel for a generator if you had wood and some rain water

very inspiring, I think I've better understood the meaning of power/watt today, the way you're explaining it with water and valve was very intuitive. thanks)

I wonder if I could scale that up a bit, my property is almost perfect for this. My house sits up on a hill and I have a field down below. I could use 2 big water tanks, like 1,000 gallons 🤔 maybe. I’m going to try this someday

This was a fun build, but it would have been nice to know how many watts your pump consumed moving all that water to the roof vs how much power you were able to generate to light your patio lights. That would give some idea of the efficiency of your setup. P = I x E

This is great, love a different perspective. Not sure if you've addressed it since I'm only 1/3 of the way through, but a totally opaque barrel would be useful to avoid some algae bloom.

I was surprised that a AA battery could store an equivalent amount of power as that water drum.

Do the math. Its yr 7 or 8 physics. AA battery has very little power and so it will only heat up a tiny amount of water a lot, or a lot of water a tiny amount. Not rocket science.

@@csjrogerson2377 what does heating water have to do with any of this... unless you are comparing how much water the drum of water vs the battery could heat.

@@csjrogerson2377 The fuck are you talking about lol

@@csjrogerson2377 It's not rocket science that this tread is not about heating water just in case your 7/8 year old physics brain wasn't able to understand. (I apologise if you are that age, though )

@@ya00007 why is everyone saying he’s wrong? heating water is the STANDARD way of finding energy content. that’s how calories and BTU are determined

Very interesting, you did a good job explaining how this works.

Would be good to know the energy cost of producing the solar panel, barrel etc. And calculate how long you can use your light.

I love your videos! So inspiring!

Wow this is so cool! Great to see how you involve your kids too, I'm sure they'll grow up to become as inquisitive and ingenious as yourself! Did you consider putting the barrel into your attic rather than onto the roof? Yes you loose a few feet, but it's invisible, and easier to get to, even for someone who seems to enjoy dancing around on roofs like you! Also, I'm wondering about how noisy the system is. Did you put the system or an optimized version into day-to-day use? The overall idea is sound, and definitely a rugged, low tech storage solution that will be applied more and more as crunch times hit!!

People have been using water to store energy for almost as long as people have been generating energy. The only problem: It takes a lot of water! I ran the numbers on this once, and it would take a swimming pool full of water to power my home for the day. Granted, I use a lot of power... Anyway, this is a really cool project and video!

If I had you as my physics teacher, I would have gotten into engineering way earlier. The way you structure you videos is amazing.

That, or you may have fallen off the roof.

Yeah very nice physics explanation. Sad that this construction is very inefficient. So expensive compared to what it does :D

Hahaha!

Cool, next build should be an automated sand bag stacking and unstacking gravity storage system.

Just found your channel. Fantastic project. Will be looking through your back catalog for sure

Great project! What if you use some liquid heavier than water like oil? Would be more eficient to produce energy? Considering that it would have more weight stored.

You could also look at the efficiency of your energy generation system i.e. an enclosed water wheel would help by keeping the weight of the water activly working and friction on the shaft may affect the system quite substantially.

I imagine you could do something similar by moving a big weight up and down the side of your home, like an elevator. It could have a container so that you can put in it dumbbells or something else much heavier than water

The wonderful thing about metric, is that you can easily calculate the necessary pump by taking how much water it needs to pump, (the joules), when you want it done (the time). Giving you around what you need.

All without a ridiculous cheat-sheet for converting gallons per hour into horse power. 🥛 ⌚ 🐎

and the bad thing about it is that it teaches you to think in multiples of 10 and nothing else, so you're at a disadvantage for anything but round numbers

@@kingmasterlord721 I've often thought about how imperial's weird fractional measurements might make you more math savvy. But that's only true if you use them a lot, if you're just wanting to do a quick calculation, you might just give up.

@@kingmasterlord721 with all due respect, but that was an almost worst defense of the imperial system than "it's been used for a very very long time"...

@@rhobson I made no mention of the imperial system. your thinking is rigid and binary. case in point.

I think it's great that you get your kids involved. Great share.

I love it! Thank you for sharing your ideas with us!

After years of 3D printing, I have found to never drill and tap your threads in the 3D print. Always always always use thread inserts to prevent the threads from ripping out

A few of these systems could be used to top up solar batteries during the night cycle, very cool...

Could you try building a solar thermal generator using a solar concentrator and Stirling engine? Uses solar power, but has much better conversion efficiency and doesn't lose performance over time or with high temperature like PV, or involve the nasty heavy metals for manufacture

This is tech I've known about for a while, but it's cool to see someone actually make a working version as a demonstration. This earned the channel a sub.

Yep. They do this with hydroelectric dams and nearby wind/solar plants and this demonstration shows exactly how efficient it can be

I don’t know if this would work where I live in Vermont. A gallon of water here is only like eight pounds, and he has water that weighs in kilograms! I mean eight pounds is way more than a box of honey grams but it’s nowhere near a thousand of ‘em

@@fishhuntadventure well being sarcastic is great, however in 99% of the world 1L water is 1000g/1kg

Been using it for decades near me with conventional power sources. Excess grid power at non peak times pumps water to a reservoir on a hill, when power is needed it is used in a hydro generator.

And another sub here 👍

You could build a raincatch that feeds water into the drum in the roof. Then you get power when it's raining, and that is exactly when the solar panels don't output any power. And you could use the water to power your bathroom light so you are effectively using the water on the roof to shower and at the same time power your bathroom light while you shower :-) 3 birds with one stone.

I get power from my solar panel array, even when it's raining and very cloudy. Just a small percentage of what I get with full sun, but it is not zero. I run a 48V nominal system with 27.6KW/h of battery storage fed by 7.05KW/h of solar panels, upgradeable, (when I get enough cash saved), to 12KW/h of solar. Even with just over half of the solar I COULD use, I haven't run a generator for two years or more. I run an RV, with 2 smallish air conditioners, (as I live where it can get to 120F in summer), a refrigerator, a stand-up freezer, my computer system, and more. Learning your energy budget is maybe the hardest part of going solar. I live in an off-grid community in the Southern CA desert. I have looked into getting a 48V wind turbine, but it looks to be cheaper to just get more solar panels. As to this water energy storage idea, it looks cool, but one would need a very strong support up pretty high...and upsizing this kind of system to power a 48V system, which most of us off-gridders have gone to.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I am using LiFePO4 batteries, that can take 100% discharge, and would last around ten years at that rate, but should last much longer since I am only bringing them down to around 80% in the winters and maybe to 50% in the summers.

I had this idea on how to store my energy from my solar panel just be imitating a big water kraftwerk. And its nice to found that someone actually made it! Great!

Congratulations my friend! Here in Portugal we have something similar with your project, but with big equipment involved. During the night, when energy consumption is lower, many Large wind Power Generators pump water from downstream to the dam upstream! So much of the energy generated by wind generators is reserved for use the next day!. Congratulations on the YouTube channel!

Great video really interesting. In terms of the technology, I’m no expert here, Cragside hall ( in Northumberland England )used a similar reservoir and a Archimedes screw to produce electricity in the house in the late 1800s. So agree not new tech 😊

Interesting Many older British houses would have a water tank in the loft for vented heating systems Could be an interesting conversion solution to upgrade to what’s basically solar hydraulic heating

As a European always amazed how light structured American houses are build, I think you took some risks :) I love how you put this idea ( I had also) into reality.

"As a European always amazed how light structured American houses are build" That's a roundabout way of saying cheap 😅 It shouldn't surprise anyone - even with slaves they couldn't build out the country this fast without cutting a lot of corners.

@@mnomadvfx *cheap to build not to buy

@@mnomadvfx Are you assuming EVERYONE in the U.S.A had their houses built by slaves back then? How snobbish of you... It was mostly the southern states that used slaves on agriculture... Your not going to have slaves build your house... Also I'm aware of the use of slaves to build infrastructure like railways, but of course this was only in specific cases.

Try to get an EU conform permission for such roof structure. 🤣

I have one question for you.... how much time it takes to fill up the top reservoir and also how much time it takes to empty that reservoir at its maximum valve opening

Fantastic build. I'd submit though that you have some wasted energy from the water splashing off the impeller. If you could somehow print something that would deflect that splashed water back on the impeller at it's negative vertical direction point, you'd gain a small amount of that wasted energy back. No idea if you'd even notice the difference but it's going to increase the overall efficiency regardless

Wow man, thanks for sharing this. I feel like i felt at least 50 brain cells grow back. This was so cool!

There is another way to store potential energy. Add a little salt and electrolysis the water to produce O2 and H2. Then store it and you could burn the hydorgen to extract energy for later use.

Based upon prior work with friends, try replacing your solar pump with solar concentrating mirrors and now it's more efficient to boil the water at the ground level and to move it to an elevated height as steam. Y'all remember, energy has two forms: potential and kinetic.

A fun and educational experiment! To help people make more comparisons, it might be useful to note that the 14,000 joules is about 4 watt hours, and that's about a third the capacity of an iPhone 13 battery.

Thank God for that demonstration of an empty jug versus a full one. I would have had no idea that the full one held much more potential energy.

I'd appreciate if you could compare pumping with a centrifugal pump over a diaphragm pump and see the round trip efficiency.

If anyone’s wondering, this stores 0.0039KWh, your phone battery is 0.019Kwh for comparison. So batteries are currently a better alternative