Shoot... That would be perfect on my pelton wheel...:eek: My water wheel (pelton wheel) would be great for that little 4 cylinder compressor! Then I would have air all the time...

I want to know more about the water wheel, but don't want to hijack. Shaun

Think this topic is getting old anyways lol. That pelton wheel is basically a fancy old mill water wheel, only more efficient. Mike has some agreement with local irrigation where he gets all the water he wants for free so he runs it through the pelton to generate electricity. Think he has more pics somewheres. Heres some reading about them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelton_wheel

I have a potential source of water, so I'm always entertaining myself with possibilities.Most interested in set-up people have done.

Oh yeah. The possibilities are endless with water. I think Mike gets his free source shut off all winter though

Did the next best thing and split the thread... So now the pelton wheel info can continue... We have a irragation dam approx. 1/3 mile up the mountain that starts out at 8" pipe out of a unname creek. The pipe necks down along its travel to 4" n top of the ridge then splits to 2 other properties. We take 50% of the water... So now with 150-180 PSI of water pressure it tends to beat a brass rain bird to death in a few years. So now if I use my pelton wheel fo electric generation I drop down to about 80 PSI which is managable for the sprinklers. The generator is a permanent magnet train generator with 2 winding 90* out of phase. Now if you take the pair of wires and short them out and try to twist the armature it takes a lot of force to turn by hand... So now on the free wheel it creates roughlt 120-130 VAC Its enough to light normal 100w bulb! If I open the valve wide and run it wide I blown a few bulbs just for fun! But then I send the power through a full wave recitifier send that directly to the batteries unregulated. On my homemade control panel I've got 2 switch controlling the 2 outputs. Thorw both switch it goes from free-wheeling to GRUNT! It actually produces roughly 240 Watts of power. If I had a bigger wheel I could do more but that require more water volume... (Bigger line)