[masraum]

Originally Posted by David

Not gonna work. Figure a decent cyclist generates about 150W but only for so long, 1-4 hours. 150 watts doesn't power much.

Now compare the force of maybe 100psi water pressure (more likely 70psi or less) pushing against a water wheel generator. Probably not as much force as that tired cyclist.

Needs a big water wheel with a high flow rate to fill big buckets on the wheel. At least that's my guess. I never took water wheel kinetics in college. I'm just thinking that you want a relatively big wheel so the weight of the water in the buckets is applying more force to the axle. Then you need some gears to get the rpm/torque of the axle to translate to a useful speed/torque for power generation.

You wouldn't know anything about that, would you David?