Ludens

And it's especially great if you have a neighbor with a son who are willing to do the labor for you. [1] [2] [1] https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20075110

This is up there with one of my favorites from Hacker News: The Microhydro Plant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6895582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20075110 https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html

Ludens is absolutely legendary. This is part of his micro hydroelectric dam[1], which he uses to power his house, which he of course built himself. Far different, but if you enjoyed this you may also enjoy another classic (which does not have explanation), Claude Paillard making a vacuum tube from glass and metal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzyXMEpq4qw [1]: https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html

Regarding hydro, you can go micro to power a house or some small comunity. There are lot's of books on microhydropower, but get a look at this fantastic post at ludens.cl http://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html

That solar quote was from a follow post from 2014: https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/intake.html

Love everything about this blog. The only disappointing thing about his projects was the house he built. You go out to live in paradise... and decide to make your home in a cave SMH. Need way more windows: https://ludens.cl/paradise/house/814.jpg

What is so special about transistors? There are many non-linear active devices that are relatively unexplored due to the local maximum of transistors. How about homemade flame triodes or magnetic amplifiers or memristor.. I think you are going to love these guys: http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/ http://ludens.cl/Electron/Electron.html

Whenever I see articles on remote electric grids, it always inspires me to (re)read this classic page: http://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html

A transformer and coil design guide from the same author: https://ludens.cl/Electron/Magnet.html

This isn't quite what you're after, but it's a pleasent read. https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html there have been some discussions on here about it too. It at least gets you all the right words to start googling for turbine options which helped me to do some back of the envelope math. It's a steeper hill than seemed feasible to me.

Not sure if it's generally applicable but I've learned a lot from reading and trying to understand how the circuits here work. https://ludens.cl/Electron/Electron.html

In that case you might enjoy this: https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html Was posted here a while back. Fascinating guy.

The associated article on creating an electronic load controller for his microhydro system is also very interesting: https://ludens.cl/Electron/picelc/picelc.html

The sitemap here is quite impressive: https://ludens.cl/sitemap.htm

Most of the images are from 2008 and the html file itself from 2009 https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/. There is also an update from 2014 https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/intake.html

As the article says, it diverts most of the flow during low-flow periods (i.e. summer) which means there would not be much left for fish passage. Might be fine, might not, I don't know enough about the ecosystem to say. Additionally, there are some definite issues with sedimentation during construction. They excavated the channel to the intake and put all the dirt from the excavation into the stream for it to "carry away"[1]. This would not be allowed in most areas I know of - essentially, fish can't breathe if there's too much dirt in the water. Then several times it overflowed and eroded the channel - more sedimentation. The author even admitted using concrete liner would be the better choice, but opted not to because it was expensive - essentially, this externalized the cost of sedimentation to the ecosystem. [1] https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/intake.html

here is another interesting tale of home-made speakers, this fellow made some very large boxes and had very specific drivers he wanted but they were still inexpensive. He used active (powered as opposed to passive RLC network) crossovers. Also he built his own off-grid house with mini-hydro plant. the OP will probably find it interesting. I ended up reading every page on this fellows 90's style website. http://ludens.cl/Electron/Speakers/speakers.html

In case it wasn't obvious and if you want to lose a few hours, here is the site map. Awesome stuff. http://ludens.cl/sitemap.htm

This man is much more sure of his construction abilities than I probably will ever be: > So if the roof collapses, it might be my fault... http://ludens.cl/paradise/house/house.html

I wonder if, instead of dumping excess power into heaters (http://ludens.cl/Electron/picelc/picelc.html), it would ever make sense for this system to pump water back to the top of the system. It might not, if the water flow is short-term stable and only varies across seasons.

I have pretty much replaced my spreadsheets with postgres(sqlite would have worked as well, but... I really like postgres) simple calculations end up as views, more complicated ones end up as an external script. a postgres function would work, but I find external scripts easier to manage. Once, as a sort of programing kata, I wanted to see if I could turn a simple spreadsheet I found on the internet into a view. transformer calculator: https://ludens.cl/Electron/trafos/trafos.html I was successful in that I was able to put the logic in what would have been a ten line program into, well, this 150 line monstrosity. same transformer calculator as a view: https://pastebin.com/xyDeAV7R Takeaway: the relational database works well to replace the spreadsheet when the spreadsheet is used as a data store, not so much when the spreadsheet is used as a programing language. but for that, the purpose built programing language is far superior.

Was this it? http://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html