Fieldstone Energy is a renewable energy company that has developed a commercially viable system for extracting energy from river systems then converting this energy to electricity. This system for producing energy now makes it possible for river water energy to provide a cheap, sustainable source of electricity to the power grid. More importantly, Fieldstone's procedure for producing energy supports sustained economic growth and a clean environment.

The Technology

Fieldstone's new environmentally friendly system for producing energy converts the flow of a river's Kinetic energy to potential energy and then back to kinetic energy utilizing small elevational changes. This system does not impact the river's natural flow with dams nor does it impact the river's wildlife.

As an example, there are over 20 locks and dams located along the entire length of the Mississippi river with elevational changes of less than 30 feet. More so, there are thousands of these locations around the world.

The flow at the mouth of the Mississippi river is over 300 thousand cubic feet per second. Not an ideal situation for a large hydro project nor would anyone want to try and impound this amount of water as too much arable land would be consumed. However, with this new method, water is diverted into a bypass channel next to the river system so as not to disturb the natural flow of the river system.

The bypass channel's water is then diverted into an impoundment area. As the water fills and evacuates the impoundment area, it lifts and lowers a weighted buoyant device. This buoyant device is connected to a double action hydraulic cylinder that is mounted above. The double action hydraulic cylinder then actuates a linear generator that is horizontally mounted on the ground away from the impoundment area. The impoundment area's water is evacuated when the ingress gate is closed and the egress gate is opened allowing the water in the impoundment area to flow out to a lower elevation using natural gravity. This leaves the full force of the weighted buoyant device to pressurize the hydraulic fluid in the cylinder.

This mechanical advantage is similarly utilized in modern hydraulic devices today. The advantage here is that a huge dammed up impoundment area is not required to develop the same amount of power that this new system is capable of producing.

One of the most important properties of water is that it is not compressible. According to Pascal's Law, “The force applied to a closed fluid environment is passed undiminished throughout the confining vessel." In short, if a 100 ton weight is lifted and left to drop, it creates 100 tones of pressure in the cylinder. Additionally, this same force is applied to the upward movement of the weighted buoyant device when the impoundment area is filled. This allows the same amount of pressure in both the upward and downward directions of the device. The pressure in the hydraulic line connected to the linear generator is then magnified using the mechanical advantage equation in reverse through force multiplication. The potential energy is converted back to Kinetic energy again. The kinetic energy [the rising & falling 100-tones] of pressurized hydraulic fluid drives the electric linear generator with a continuous back and forth movement.

Prospective customers for Fieldstone Energy's devises are power utilities, single industrial users in heavy and remote industry and small communities. Hawaii is a good example, great hydro potential, however, due to the premium on land, one would not want to impound thousands of acres of land to develop head pressure with traditional dam systems. The same energy potential can be created with this new method which in turn, would cause very little impact on the environment. In addition, the system's footprint is relatively small and does not create a huge visual impairment to the land.

Supporting Technologies

Assume that you have two cylinders full of water with a pipe connecting the two cylinders together as shown. If you apply a force F to the left-hand plunger, it creates a pressure in the left-hand cylinder. Let's say you apply a 10 pound downward force to the left-hand cylinder. Let's also say that the radius of the left-hand cylinder is 0.57 inches. Therefore, the area of the left-hand piston is Pi * 0.57 * 0.57 = 1 square inch. If the radius of the right-hand cylinder is 4 times greater, or 2.28 inches, then the area of the right-hand piston is 16 square inches, or 16 times greater. If you push the left-hand piston down through 16 inches with a force of 10 pounds, then the right-hand piston will rise 1 inch with a force of 160 pounds. Hydraulic cylinders of all sorts take advantage of this simple force-multiplying effect every day.
You can see that a block and tackle, a lever, a gear train and a hydraulic system all do the same thing: they let you magnify a force by proportionally diminishing the distance through which the magnified force can act. It turns out that this sort of force multiplication is an extremely useful capability! See diagram below:

Typical Dual-Action Hydraulic used by Fieldstone Energy

Example of Larger Scale Hydraulics readily available

Helical Gear System to decrease rotation without losing power

Typical Electrical Generator showing cut-away view of internal components