The East Bay Municipal Utilities District is installing a device designed to generate electricity by using the movement of water through its drinking water delivery system.
The installation of the “in-conduit hydroelectricity” system will generate 130,000 kilowatt hours of emissions-fee power per year, according to EBMUD officials.
A typical home uses about 11,000 kilowatt hours per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The new system is designed by InPipe Energy, a California-based clean energy company.
“EBMUD is always looking for innovative opportunities to meet our goal to become a carbon-neutral enterprise and contribute to fighting climate change,” said EBMUD Board Member Marguerite Young.
The InPipe system is part of a pilot program that will be evaluated at some point to see if it should be continued or expanded.
Great, will I be able to Opt Out of the PG&E Monopoly??
130,000 kilowatt hours of emissions-fee power per year, according to EBMUD officials. Per year is a confusing number. That hardly seems like anything. Oh Well !
Let’s see. It takes pumps to push the water through the pipes. Put something on the pipe that uses that pump pushed water to generate electricity that the pumps will use to push the water harder now with the restriction of this device. Doesn’t make sense to me
@SICK OF IT….Put a windmill and a couple of solar panels at each little pump station. No wind, no sunlight, no problem…just hook up a diesel fueled generator. And what happens when the incoming water screens fill up with dead fish. It all sounds good to the “green people”. Maybe another dam up in the foothills would be easier.
Its called gravity. They are not putting these turbines where they would need to artificially pump water.
WOW, water flow thru a pipe to generate electricity . . . what a concept. (SCa) sarcasm alert
The EBMUD thing does not make sense. EBMUD is using electricity to pump water through their system. If you insert any sort obstruction within the water delivery system then the pumps need to work harder which uses more electricity and causes the pumps to wear out faster. An in-pump electric generator would be an obstruction. Due to net inefficiencies in both the pumps and generators you will always use more electricity than you can generate.
There will be sections of pipe where the water is flowing downhill. However, you also need to pump water up to the top of the hill so that it can then flow downhill. An obstruction such as a generator on the downhill also impacts the pumps pushing the water up to the top of the hills. The net result is you use more electricity overcoming the obstruction then you can get from the obstruction.
The only area where electric generators make sense is within and at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains where you get a big assist from gravity. I would be astonished if they were not already generating electricity from that water.
While I don’t agree with it, MCE “clean electricity” excludes electricity from hydroelectric dams. I think that one is a ploy to make PG&E look dirty and bad. PG&E’s hydroelectric system generates 3,900 megawatts (MW) of power or 30 times the total energy the EBMUD system will generate. 12.2% of California’s electricity comes from hydroelectric dams and in-pipe generators.
Contra Costa Water has been generating electricity for decades. They use PG&E electricity to pump water up to the Los Vaqueros Reservoir when the snowmelt surge comes down from the Sierra Nevada. In the late summer and winter they release water from the reservoir and run it through electric generators. I have forgotten if they send the electricity to PG&E or if they are able to use it in-house at their filter plant. By doing this, Contra Costa Water is able to recapture some of the electricity they used to pump the water into the reservoir.
I have a perpetual motion machine I would like to sell to EBMUD.
Did everybody forget Rube Goldberg. He was full of great ideas like this one.