Powering An Old Mill - 1.5 Kw Lake District Overshot Waterwheel Project Part 3 

Kris do not be too harsh on yourself! the whole wheel looks absolutely amazing.

You are an eloquent testament to the theory that progress is made through an iterative process of failures leading to eventual success. Your consistent positive attitude and wonderful sense of humility are amazing. Keep going!

Fascinating and a Beautiful work of art!!!

많이 개선 되었네요. 잘 보고 갑니다. ~~~

Live and learn. The work you've done is amazing. Don't kick yourself for the decision regarding the motor. Reasonable decision. Things happen. You've learned so much from the incident. You admitting the flaws makes you an honest man and sets you apart from the vast majority of people. Good on you! Keep it up Kris 💪

Your work is typically so well engineered and thought through; I can see how incredibly frustrating it would be to have faulty (lying) suppliers. Press on young man!

Hi Kris, great video ( as always) I would have extended the shute feeding the water to the top of the wheel a tad more to give the wheel more energy from the force of the water. Also, I would have made the shaft "through" the wheel to accept the whole torque and use course threads as opposed to welds. Apart from that I would give yourself a 10/10 for a fine job......keep up the vids and great work.

You are an amazing person Kris! Happy New Year 2024! Greetings from Italy. 👍👍👍

Not only is this totally fascinating to follow, but your positive approach that learning is learning (& not 'failure') is really encouraging and inspiring.

Hey Kris, the wheel is looking fantastic! some input for the electronics, if its of any addition to what you already know. The difference here is that they specify 2KW but this will be the short term Peak rating not the continuous rating. This is not that unusual to state peak rather than continuous, Chinese or otherwise. Motors, inverter, speaker, power amps always tend to use peak because people love big numbers. It also not just the wire, it is the power density/efficiency the wire you measured will be one of at least two for just one of the phases so current capability is ok (especially as the rating is KWpeak). Running a higher voltage from the motor for the same amount of power (lower current) will reduce the temperature rise in the wires/motor. Double the voltage/half the current but 1/4 the temperature rise of the Alternator. This is also more efficient to run at a higher VDC down the cable to your controller (of course short distance 30M or so this doesn't matter so much but every bit is a hit in over all system efficiency). If you get the output of the alternator to be in the top 1/3 or 1/4 of the operating voltage rating of the Solis DC input for peak RPM of the wheel. Also take advantage of some of the shaft rpm to shift air around inside that enclosure. Hope this helps.

That winding you showed of the 3 phase alternator with the endshield removed, no phase insulation between phases and sustandard varnish on the winding which is suppised to hold the winding together/firm so the individual wires cannot rub,vibrate against each other. Also have a look at the winding connection to the output leads to see if there is any parallel connection of the individual winding wires...Keep up the great work, so so interesting.

Отличный мастер! хорошая работа. Привет из России!

Sorry you have to deal with all that crap, but life is a learning experience. You do absolutely amazing work. ☮️

As. Classic race car engineer, I’m really addicted to this channel it’s great to hear a guy with this amount of knowledge on the case

I have learned a lot from this video of yours! Thank you very much! Keep it up!

You have an epic workshop, I envy you :)

I can totally understand the frustration. But you are very thorough and smart enough to find a solution, which is why I love watching the channel. Good luck on this one Kris !👍👍

Kris, what a fantastic piece of engineering! Well done and meticulous executed. Before you start redesigning your generator setup however, please consider that this motor can actually do it, based on 3 phase and 0.7mm wire (as several people pointed out in the comments). However, when generating 2KW electricity and 80% efficiency it produces approx 500W of heat. This is the case regardless of the generator configuration. A redesign might improve the efficiency a bit but the heat still has to go somewhere. There are two ways to get rid of this heat: Convection and conduction. Convection transfers heat to the air around it and will require forced air flow. Conduction transfers the heat to the mounting bracket and the frame, from where convection will take over. Water cooling of the frame will reduce the convection needs, making this less dependent on the ambient temperature. A very rough estimate of convection cooling: If the maximum motor housing temperature is 60C and the ambient air is 40C (consider the summer) then there is a 20 degree max temp difference. Newtons law of cooling states that the rate of cooling is directly proportional to the temperature difference. If the surface area of the motor is fixed and the temp difference is fixed then your variable is the air flow. The heat transfer is calculated as: heat transferred (500 Watt) = hc (transfer coefficient) * A (surface area) * dT (20 degrees temp difference). 'A' is the motor surface area (which is enlarged by the ribs). hc depends on air flow speed and surface radiance. For air flow this is roughly 30 W/m^2*K for an air flow of 5m/sec and 40W for 20m/sec (so not linear!). If we ballpark the surface area at 1/10sqm then an air flow of 5m/s will transfer: 30 * 1/10 * 20 = 60 watt. You will need nearly 0.5M^2 surface area with 20m/s air flow to make this work for 20C temp difference. Disclaimer: this has some huge simplifications and should be properly calculated by a professional. Its been over 30 years since I last looked at this so no guarantees on the above. How to improve the air flow? Perhaps a fan blade on the generate pulley will do. It needs an opening in the housing where the fan can draw air inside. A big round hole in the cover in front of the fan would do nicely. This assumes that the air exit through the bottom isn't too obstructed. Probably best to combine this with conductive cooling using some of that water. Summers are getting hot and water stays cooler providing a greater temperature difference to work with. Conductive cooling has its own formulas based on transference of heat through a solid but this post is already long enough. I'd be happy to help bouncing off ideas if you like. Last, you can test this on your work bench by putting a 500W heating element in the motor cover and put a cowl over it. Then cut a hole and blow some air through and see the temp drop. Good luck and I hope your resolve it without too much headache.

Waiting for next Part. Good Job.

Hi criss love the RU-vid channel carn't wait for the next one

34:47 The label alone provides for mistrust in the alternator's ability. Otherwise, your work on the wheel, all things mechanical and your commitment to a job well done is inspirational!

A good honest episode. A lesson learnt. If you find a suitable replacement, you could use the lathe as a test bed, having made a fixture for it.

Very nice job. I think that putting a capacitor behind the rectifiers would solve the voltage problem on the inverter. You can use a capacitor bank from a VSD whose transistors have died.

wow so amazing my friend👍

You're like an industrial detective. Sherlock Harbour. Love it!

Kris, kudos to you for exposing the lies as you did. I can only imagine your frustration, but everyone who watches this channel knows you will more than make everything right in the end for your client. That water wheel is a work of art. And once done, I am certain it will run for years.

Could you have water cooled the alternator to improve performance? Clearly it has ample water around when it's overheating. Would be yet another system though and still the alternator might fail earlier than expected. Pretty cool project, thanks for documenting it.

thanks for all your work and information

I think you have to take a step back and just admire the whole projekt. This is absolutely stunning! Also huge props to the gully builder, that's looking really good!

Nothing worse than having to explain to a customer that you’ve done everything to the best of your knowledge, and then to look like a fool because you’ve been lied to by a supplier. I really hope your customer understands and isn’t holding back on “too much” cash. This is what kills small business’, when all you want to do is have a happy customer who will spread your name, but go into the red because of nonsense like this. Head up mate! You’re doing a great job!

2kw peak performance. Which means for a moment 😡 Beautiful work mate. Great watch

Brilliant just Brilliant. Well done that man

thanks for the video, I was talking with someone about this process of power generation 2 days ago, and you have just taught me so much in a single 40 minute video. Lots of food for thought here.

You may already have experienced this: every redo always turns out better. The school of doing is one hell of a teacher! Clear your mind and go at this anew, as if it is new … because it is new, again and so is the day.! 👍 You are mastering this as you go; just don’t be dangerous.

beautiful welds on the elephant trunk !

You are a legend I find your videos so interesting

All is not lost. Thank you for putting in the time on this. The world is a better place for it! Cheers! Keep on keeping on.🥃

It's cool to see how your skills and shop/homestead have progressed over the years, I've been binge watching your Playlist over the last month. Thanks for all the inspiration and great vids.

i would hope there is a company out there that could give kris a real 2KW alternator for a bit of advertising. amazing design and creation pal

Nice job,,,after you double, triple your alternator size with a good make,,you need to water cool your alternator,,,,wrap some copper tubing around it,,take water from above

I’m a 71 year old electrical engineer. One thing I learned (eventually) is that critical path items must be tested before being installed. It’s time consuming and costly to do so, but there really is no reasonable option.

WOW! I'M SUPER IMPRESSED WITH THE SHOOT SPLASH IMPROVEMENT! AMAZING ENGINEERING!

At least you got good footage, love the project.

Kris, can you not add another alternator of the same type and run them in parallel? Just an idea that may be less work. Thank you for sharing, again your skill and craftsmanship is top tier. 👏

These videos lower my blood pressure. Not joking. Awesome and purposeful engineering plus the great outdoors. Love it!

Super impressed with the change from the new nozzle/flu. Great job

Great video Kris

Keep going mate. You'll get there.

"Look at that angle.... perfect" I know too well the pride that comes from something that goes as you hope, but that has generated so much anxiety... Really top work!!

Kris you are a one man business, developing an engineering product from scratch. .Don't lose heart, like you said you know how to fix this. You have created an amazing system and you have uncovered a product shortcoming very early in the process really.

I helped a friend years ago on his water wheel generator. It was a similar design. I organised having a new shaft made to take a step up gearbox (100:1). It was driving a site generator ( the ones you get on a trailer, driven by a diesel engine at 3000rpm) I can't remember the output of the generator. The water wheel was ran at 15rpm, giving 1500rpm output on the gearbox. We ran a 2:1 tooth belt system similar to yours, giving a final generator speed of 3000rpm. He ran that wheel for years powering the house and small workshop. In the evening he would shut the power off to the house, which switched a relay. That diverted the power from the wheel to his polytunnel, feeding storage heaters. It was a cool set up until he went away for a weekend and there was a massive dump of rain & spate. We recon the wheel reached 60rpm before it blew up. On the buying of a new pulley for the motor, why dont you just buy s new taperlok for the center.. Great work on the wheel & hats off to you for great videos.

Amazing! This is great! Human ingenuity a it's best.

Absolutely amazing, wish I was involved in a project like this! One slight little improvement on the “Grid down” circuit is to add an indicator light.

Kris, problem solving is what you do - I have every confidence that you’ll sort it! Also lots of great advice from the electromotive geeks and engineers in the comments. There’s some gems in there I’m sure.

Young man where have you been!!! Glad to see your back

I think you need a water wheel for your metal roller 😉! I'm really enjoying these videos. I was going to comment on the previous video about using the surface tension of water to aim the extension into the trough and also fixing a plywood or poly board curved for the chute. Finally, have a look at Viktor Schauberg's work on water energy for chutes, rivers and waterways. There are some ideas in there! PS Some copper anti-seize on the belt tensioner threads will lay dividends (unless you want it seized). PSS, perhaps venting the protective cover would aid in cooling the alternator, possibly fitting a fan on the pulley shaft to move air over it?

Well done my friend you have a great knowledge so don't beat yourself up you have done a excellent job in your work and your diagnosis take care and well done regards Alan and Ella.

Quick tip; When modifying the generator guard, add some strategically placed venting holes. These generators, and especially synchronous motors rely on open air to properly cool. That might fix the overheating issue.

Amazing job, love it. If I could I would have the same watermill in my place. Chinese alternator, what a joke.

Just FYI, with an overshot wheel you want to have the water enter the wheel with as little kinetic energy as possible. Splashing comes from kinetic energy. Instead of a sloped trough with a curved chute at the end (which cause the water to convert potential energy to kinetic) you want a nearly level trough dropping water into the buckets as gently as possible. To that end, your best bet would be discarding the "nozzle", bringing the trough to nearly level, and raising the wheel to meet the end of the trough.

Would be great if a UK-based alternator manufacturer might see this and get involved! I guess on the "bright" side you have a spare 600w alternator and a heater that might work on future projects. Thanks for doing the hard, painful work to inform us all of such pitfalls. And, despite a setback here and there, I continue to have: No. Doubt. In my mind.

Keep learning kid, and your tenacity is admired. Lots of help around from the old school for those willing to ask.

You win some, you learn some.

Fascinating content. Came here at the suggestion of another RU-vidr in the states. Sorry can't remember his name but he's just finished building his barn using an old method and that's when he referred to you. What a shame you relied on this made in C product that's now going to cause you to restart. Lake district ice heard is a beautiful area. My husband's cousin moved up there to retire recently. Got to show him your videos. He'll love them.

You're such an inspiration Kris....on so many levels. Your creativity combined with engineering reminds me of Leonardo De Vinci on a smaller scale. I bet he never had to deal with a bunch of patent stealing, peasants that can't spell the word quality! Time for a beer, hot bath, good nights kip then soldier on with the revision to the original design. As Robert Pirsig so wisely observed in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, if you don't overcome the "gumption trap" that this has created for you, you'll just engineer your bad mood into the next phase. Keep on old son, you're soooooo on the right track.

Mistakes are a very normal part of any engineering project, don't be hard of yourself and keep innovating, the next iteration will be much better! P.S absolutely loving this series!

Suggestion for replacement for the alternator? March down to the hardware store and buy yourself a brand new gas powered 2kw generator and pull the alternator off of that. Heck for that matter you could buy a 5kw one. Just sell the motor afterwards for a couple hundred.

Fascinating video. Brilliant.

You are my genius mentor, and as careful as you are, you have shown that challenges will always occur with third-party equipment! The fun in all of this is found in your creative solutions!

Your work is brilliant Kris, and this issue relates directly to basic dishonesty on the supplier's behalf, a problem I have run into time after time with Chinese suppliers unfortunately.

Brilliant.... can't squeeze blood out of a stone 😔😮

Your videos really help me to realise how thick I really am ! 😁

Very talented engineering here, great to see. You will get it working fine and then the alternators can be used for another project. Great to watch!

Great video, I used to work for a world renowned hydroelectric turbine company from the lakes, and travelled all over the world doing installs and the number of times we would come across projects with Chinese hardware and the customer would tell us that it wouldn t produce what they stated was crazy, also kit would fail very quickly due to inferior materials used. Take it as a lesson learnt and carry on with your great projects, your doing great

For future reference, it's entirely typical for a low performance uncooled permanent magnet eMachine to have a continuous rating at very much less than half the peak rating! For a cooled eMachine, you'd expect around 60% of the rated peak power on a continuous basis. This machine will have high losses as it is a cheap device. You might find that as the losses are predominately copper losses ie resistive, then running the machine twice as fast but at half the phase current allows it to perform much better as copper losses scale by the square of the current (twice speed = twice voltage = hlaf current for same power, and hence 4 times lower copper loss, but higher iron losses)

Here is a tip weld a tube to the inside of the Handel end if the main frame and slide some weights that they use in the gym so it stops walking around when you are using it so you don’t have to fight with it and when you need to move it you can easily slide the weights off.

I love watching you working on your projects. I wish I would be able to do all this. Thanks for taking us along for the ride, I learn a lot.

Your 3 amp calculation is really per phase and you have 3 phases, so 9 amps seems realistic to me. You should also find out if the windings are star or delta connected. Resistance of wire varies and you won't get a good value by just considering the diameter. A better approach would be to measure the resistance of each phase then use P = V^2 / R

You must have been a prodigy with Leggo's as a kid. 😉

Thanks for the heads-up on the false advertising.

Kris, have a rewind done on that motor in thicker wire to give you the 2.5 3kw that your needing. Sure it can be done by a rewind company in the UK and be cheaper then the cost of your time and materials on reworking the mounts.

This is superb fine art of ingenuity! Job well done, Sir!

Hello Kris, Your improved flow guide goes a long way towards filling the buckets, but the old School way of "filling the buckets" was to reverse the rotation. This entails making the water fall on the near side of the axis. This would fill the buckets without losing "grip" on the rotation and losing a lot of water through splashing. Unfortunately this means you would have to turn the water wheel around 180 degrees. Check Salvage Squad repair of a flour mill, featuring Suggs and team.

You can somehow mount a fan to that system and the wheel will run the fan and cool the alternator down. Otherwise very good job

Look how far you’ve come, this is a tiny blip on your amazing journey of experience! You’re fantastic and inspiring as always, cheers Rob.

Kris. You’re such a fantastic guys and love ❤️ your enthusiasm 😊 I feel your frustration but as always you’ll get there and I’m sure you’ll get more customers as you make fantastic bits of kit 👍🏻

You did great man

This is awesome. Noise would be my main concern.

I think it can do 2kw when run at double or even triple the speed you were running it at before. A modified car alternator will do 2-3 kw continuous with less copper than this one. Forget what the tag says about rated rpm and what not, you just need to make sure the voltage doesnt exceed whatever that grid inverter is capable of. You already kinda hinted at this in the last video where the water wheel was spinning too fast but the alternator wasnt overheating.

Excellent work and video! Might I suggest, your shafts and hardware need nickel-anti-seize paste when assembling. It will make assembly and future maintenance much easier, especially in a wet environment.

Thank you for doing this. Always wanted to; had an idea but not the extent of whats involved. So to power a house would be a mix of this wind, solar an a whole lotta maintenance! :) may I recommend ABB, Schneider electric, GE or Siemens, from memory they can do decent power generating alternators, cheers lad!

Thank you. Keep working, good luck to you.

I know it's frustrating Kris, but we are learning from you. Your equipment is fine, but now we know what to look out for from the other manufactures. I expect next week we will learn even more. Thank you for handling it so well. I hope this next week is better for you.

Hi Kris, I watched your video last night and I've been following your project. A few thoughts: First, if I was in your situation now, with the added pressure of this being a customer installation a couple of hundred miles up the M6, I'd be exploring the simplest solution first - and for me this would mean getting a PMG/motor manufacturer on board (I have a company in mind) that could help with either a new unit, or a rewind of one of those chinese units with a different winding configuration and possibly a replacement lamination stack. From my experience in PMG design, it looks like (and this is just based on how it appears on screen) that unit/design/size should be able to manage 2kW at ~90-95% efficiency if wound correctly. If you want to try going down this route, I can help you talk to these guys from a PMG design point of view, the first thing they'd need would be a whole host of measurements such as lamination stack depth, slot depth/width, airgap size, target RPM, etc. and with these numbers plugged into their software you should be able to get a quick answer on whether or not a rewind would be feasible. Regarding using an induction motor as a generator - whilst this can work, it's not as simple as a PMG because it needs an excitation voltage to generate, and if you do this with capacitors you will have to size everything for a single operating point/power point and then you have the problem of it being difficult to regulate, and possibly losing excitation and free-spinning. If I were going down this route, I'd be fearing 'opening up a can of worms' and I'd want to be fully testing and proving this in the workshop first, over the full operating range (using a motor-generator rig) before taking it on site. I've been involved in product developments in the past where the R&D spilled out onto a customers site, and for several weeks I was driving backwards and forwards to London every week trying to solve a motor control/stability problem that could've been solved at the lab, so I understand the stress involved. I don't know how to contact you other than this comment section, and after a couple of tries my comment seems to not exist if I leave any hint of my details. Cheers, Andy

Cooling is the main issue. Worked in wind power for 20years and as soon as cooling fan fails the generator will overheat on full power. To get one back online without replacing the failed cooling fan motor, your looking at half power for it to stay at a happy temperature. Worth considering a fan.Paul.

Handsome job!

Great video Kris. Too bad that you had this issue but it is totally inspiring that you keep going and do whatever it takes to get it right. I cannot wait for the next video. And furthermore I think these videos should be shown in schools because you are one hell of a guy who is prepared to have a go at anything and do it really well.

I get that you probably need to move it occasionally for clearance, but i can only imagine how much easier that sheet metal roller would be to use if it was semi-permanently fixed down.

i wonder how long those bearings will last with water being splashed on them so much and with how much and non stop the wheel is working..super cool set up, great work i hope oneday i can make myself something like this on smaller scale =-]

Keep up the good work