How Much Electricity Can I Produce With 10000 Liters Of Water? (Hydropower)

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If I built a hydropower turbine designed to generate electricity from 10000 Liters of water, how much electricity would it likely produce?

In: Physics

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Depends how far the water falls.

Hydropower converts potential energy to electricity. Potential energy is mass X force of gravity X height. Hydropower is around 90% efficient so we multiply by 90/100.

10,000 litres of water weighs 10,000 kg So for each metre it falls you’ll produce 10,000*9.8*.9 joules.

So that’s 88.2 kilojoules or 0.0245kwh. If you take it to the top of a 100m hill, you’ll get 2.45kwh.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Unfortunately your question is impossible to answer. If you have 10k gallons water, you can calculate the theoretical potential energy stored in it based on how far it would fall. From there though real world issues like friction loss from the water falling in piping, efficiency of the turbine, flow rate of the water, etc all would change the answer.

Too hypothetical for this sub