(3307) Wind Vs. Hydro
Jacob Cailes
St. Paul's Norwood

Abstract


In my project I made a small hydro station and windmill. They spin electrical genorators to produce power. I hooked them up to a volt meter to see which one would produce more power in volts and current which is the purpose of my experiment. I then scaled them up to see how much power they would produce if they were real size. I predicted that the hydro station would produce more power. I thought that the windmill would produce more scale power. My predictions for which system would produce more power were incorect. That was due to the inefitiancy of the motors. And also to the fact that the motors needed to be spun very fast but with little force. The hydro station had alot of force but wasn't spinning as fast, and the wind was the oppisite. Since they were the same motors, the faster it spins, the more power it will produce. My predictions for which produced more scale power were correct. The was because even though there wasn't much difference between how much power they produced, the scale was alot different. The wind had alot of a larger scale than the hydro. So the power it produced was being multiplyed by a higher number than the hydro. In my research paper I explore what effects how well these systems work. For the windmill the swept area and windspeed effect it. For the hydro station, the head (height the water is dropped from) and the flow (how much water is being dropped) effect it. Overall, if they were real size, the hydro station would have enough power to power 3-4 houses. The windmill could power about two dozen. In real life, the windmill would have produced 10 times as much power and the hydro station would have made 100 times the power. This outcome was mostly due to the inefitiant genorators.