Anyone knows of local guys doing small scale hydro power generation?
KZN and EC area…
WD Power in East Rand.
See this article: Local farmer achieves goal of getting off power grid by harnessing hydro-energy | Letaba Herald
I have no reference about them myself!
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I only know of a hydro plant somewhere in the Koue bokkeveld mountains between Ceres and Citrusdal, Western Cape. I don’t know where it is, only that it exists.
There is also an installation on the Prince Albert’s Pass road. I haven’t seen it but there is a massive head of water down to the valley below. It’s an alternator installation which I believe can’t handle 24/7 operation.
I can dig up more info if required…
Thanks. These are below 3kW generation. All on private property.
Thanks any info or persons able to build/maintain will be most helpful.
Busy upskilling either way on a few systems built locally or bought from NZ many years ago.
Will do a video or two in future for info/leanings
This system is in the US but was done by my china who left SA a while back. He’ll be a good bet so let me know…
The voltage at the station is 218 volts for a 208 system. I could open 3 nozzles on one machine and get 2950 watts, but the forth nozzle would shut down the inverter. I needed a computer to open the voltage window on the inverters. The system will be operated remotely when finished. An electric ball valve will open slowly to start the turbines. We have also installed a flow meter to measure how much water is flowing through the turbines back into a reservoir.
We don’t have a lot of water in Africa (the current floods in Gauteng aside!) so micro systems are more viable…
Kris Harbour on Youtube may be a start… I know it sounds a strange thought but he could remotely do all the planning and fabrication, etc for you and then ship the items… maybe a lower cost option. He is starting up a hydro business. This system integrates into a large Victron PV installation.
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I would trust him as well… especially given you can see his quality is excellent.
Pursuant to my AGM longevity, I was on the farm where farmer has hydro plant…fool me not to take pics 
They have excess water in winter and he runs house on this during winter…daytime sun is very short for solar due to the mountains.
It has two spouts, but only uses one as water source strong and two would generate too much power which has to be dumped in a ‘sink’
Very similar to this… https://www.powerspout.com/
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Thanks for the info! Yea have seen a few of these locally. Glad people are making use of excess water when available.