The South Kitsap Water Reclamation Facility in Port Orchard, Wash., doubles as an energy test site for a company pioneering a new kind of hydropower technology.
Facility manager John Poppe wondered whether it would ever be feasible to generate a little hydropower from the water that falls over a weir before discharge to Puget Sound.
When Burt Hamner of Hydrovolts told him about his new barrel-rotor low-head hydroturbine generator, Poppe obtained permission from his supervisors to evaluate it. A Hydrovolts crew installed the prototype in the plant chlorine contact basin’s 10-foot-deep outfall well.
The unit ran for four months, powering a 300-watt floor
