Date of Submission

Spring 2018

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Physics

Project Advisor 1

Matthew Deady

Abstract/Artist's Statement

When you hear the word hydropower you automatically jump to using water in order to create power or electricity. However, delving deeper and trying to understand the technology involved in it becomes quite a lot more complicated. To try to comprehend some of the knowledge of how to convert the power of water into electricity, I decided to design and build my own hydroelectric generator. I took the time to research and discover more about the process of building a generator and the specific pieces that come together in order to build one specifically powered by water. After my research, I designed and built my own model of a hydroelectric generator using a hydro-turbine called an impulse turbine. This turbine is commonly found residing alongside large waterfalls and damns. Knowing this, I placed my generator alongside the Sawkill Creek waterfall so as to best determine what would happen if this hydro-turbine was implemented in a situation that it was not recommended for. Since the Sawkill waterfall is not as high plus it’s water moves faster than what is recommended for an impulse turbine it would be a challenge to design a generator that could produce power using it. Given all this, I was able to produce a low amount of electricity in my system, while creating a new and expanded knowledge of the physics and engineering skills it takes to develop a hydroelectric generator.

Open Access Agreement

Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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