Water power is being harnessed to create cheap and clean renewable energy in an invention that may help irrigators, remote mining communities or rural users.
The four-tonne Sundermann Water Power turbine was a national finalist in the Australian Clean Tech Big Ideas awards held last night in Sydney.
Company director Leigh Bennett says the turbine runs solo, or several can be joined for large power generation, making it ideal for the Australia’s disaster response and other aid programs.
“It would be a wonderful thing to have an Australian design, an Australian-made device that is put into place that can literally changes the lives of people in the community,” he said.
“So whilst it might help a farmer or an irrigator here, that same impact can be quite different in a place where people are on all sorts of interesting fuels that we really should not be using.”
Mr Bennett says the invention uses water flows to create power, and has the economic and financial benefit of reducing heavy reliance on diesel generators.
He says high rainfall areas of South America, PNG and the Pacific are ideal for the invention, as trials have been successful in showing global application for the units.
“They are a plug-in power, as they are dropped into a river stream and immediately start generating power that is free and renewable energy. And it lowers the use of diesel fuels, so we think we have fantastic potential for global application for that.”
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