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[Fossaman]

I noticed something interesting while I was fiddling around with large amounts of water today. I've got a power plant setup that looks like this:


As I was draining the reservoir, the water level got down to alternating 6/7 and 7/7, and then 4/7 and 5/7 like you see in the screenshots. And the wheels started turning. The original design was for a pump at the end of the channel to ensure a constant flow. But I'm seriously considering scrapping that and just closing the floodgate for that channel, because:

All of the wheels are at full power, just from the water sloshing back and forth. I don't think the pump method would get that kind of efficiency. When I first opened the intake for this, the initial flow only ever got up to 900 power generated.

So, has anybody tried this for their megaproject power before? It makes the standard perpetual motion designs seem really pointless.

[numerobis]

really pointless.

Yeah, well...

In any case, your discovery makes all sorts of sense given what I believe about dwarf physics.  I'm not sure why I hadn't thought of it before.

[The Mad Engineer]

Forget perpetual motion, we're creating mechanical energy out of brownian motion!

[x2yzh9]

YOU SIR, HAVE COMMITED DORF SCIENCE!

[Mraedis]

This will fail at times, shutting down all your machines for some seconds, then reboot.  Pumps are the way to go.

[Demetrious]

This will fail at times, shutting down all your machines for some seconds, then reboot.  Pumps are the way to go.

Confirmed dwarven.

[Particleman]

... That's actually very ingenious. Props for discovering it. I don't know why nobody else has noticed this before, though.

[Lav]

Could someone please provide a working proof of concept, not just a screenshot?

I tried to create a brownian motion power plant, and it works fine for a few seconds, but eventually it freezes and the wheels stop responding to brownian motion below (the tiles are all 4-5 full just like on the pic above).

So while such a system might probably be able to squeeze some extra power from draining water, I'm not sure it can function long enough to be considered useful.

[Itnetlolor]

I need to see a blueprint of exactly what you did there. It looks like you stacked a couple perpetual generators on top of each other, with an over-flowing well backwashing into the system.

Considering power from multiple sources, that could explain the bugfeature.

[smjjames]

I noticed something interesting while I was fiddling around with large amounts of water today. I've got a power plant setup that looks like this:


As I was draining the reservoir, the water level got down to alternating 6/7 and 7/7, and then 4/7 and 5/7 like you see in the screenshots. And the wheels started turning. The original design was for a pump at the end of the channel to ensure a constant flow. But I'm seriously considering scrapping that and just closing the floodgate for that channel, because:

All of the wheels are at full power, just from the water sloshing back and forth. I don't think the pump method would get that kind of efficiency. When I first opened the intake for this, the initial flow only ever got up to 900 power generated.

So, has anybody tried this for their megaproject power before? It makes the standard perpetual motion designs seem really pointless.

You know, I may have stumbled on this once when I was making an inlet for a drowning chamber. A little background here, the fort was on the coast and I had made a bend in the channel to act as a wavebreaker so I wouldn't have water covering the floor where I wanted the dwarves to build stuff (not to mention making it hard for me to see where the floor ended). I extended the channel a bit and installed a pump and a waterwheel since I needed to push the water up a z-level. What I discovered was that the waterwheel was powered on its own, I think it was intermittent, I don't remember. Anyways, all I had to do to start the pump was to flick a lever and it started on its own, didn't even need to use a dwarf to start it up. I think part of it was due to the water bieng pushed up the channel and then washing back down to the ocean.

I had stumbled on wave generated power right there. So, under the right conditions, it does work.

I know some people are a bit skeptical at this (and some of you that posted do sound a bit skeptical), but believe me, that drowning chamber worked. That fort is long gone, so I can't recover it, but it should be reproduceable.

While what I did was small scale and it was enough to just jump start the pump, which was all I needed at that time.

[Euld]

So, let me see... you filled up a resevior to 7/7, then blocked it off, then channeled a section attached to it so the water level dropped, causing waves.  Wouldn't the water start to even out after a while?  And if it doesn't, and if the power is coming from a wave that doesn't stop, is it possible to create several waves going across the surface of the water, thus keeping the wheels powered all the time?

[smjjames]

Let me ask one thing though Fossaman, was this with an ocean with waves and all or was it with a reservoir? I don't think lakes in DF have waves, although in reality if its big enough, waves can certainly form, even if they are one inch high waves.

[Fossaman]

I have yet to see any signs of this system failing to provide power. I'll keep watching it, but it looks stable.

Let me ask one thing though Fossaman, was this with an ocean with waves and all or was it with a reservoir?

Artificial reservoir, actually. Not a real lake. (although it doesn't really matter, water is water)You'll notice that there are a bunch of fours and fives in the first picture? That's as the very bottom-most level of it was draining so I could do some work on the plumbing. By 'waves' I just mean the oscillations of the uneven water surface.

I need to see a blueprint of exactly what you did there. It looks like you stacked a couple perpetual generators on top of each other, with an over-flowing well backwashing into the system.

Nope. That's not what I did. It was originally designed as a perpetual motion system using only one pump. The bottom z-level of the reservoir (the second picture) would be pressurized, so there's a diagonal jog there. Water would flow through, depressurized, then get sucked up by the pump, turning the wheels as it goes. The diagonal square also has a floodgate on it, allowing me to shut off the system as I like (although now its only function is to prevent the system from flooding up to an even 7/7, which would stop it). What you see in the pictures is the extent of the system; there's another lobe of it rotated 180 off to the right, but it's exactly the same.

So, let me see... you filled up a resevior to 7/7, then blocked it off, then channeled a section attached to it so the water level dropped, causing waves.  Wouldn't the water start to even out after a while?  And if it doesn't, and if the power is coming from a wave that doesn't stop, is it possible to create several waves going across the surface of the water, thus keeping the wheels powered all the time?

Sort of. I just controlled filling using floodgates. All of the channeling and such was done pre-flooding. And it's not really waves, it's squares of water that are less or more full than all the others. With this exact design I can tell you that both two squares and four squares that are different will effectively run all the waterwheels at once. This will never 'even out' as you say, because there's nowhere for it to even out to.

I'm starting to suspect that the shape of the channels has something to do with the success or failure of a brownian power-plant. Has anybody tried with exactly the shape seen here? With it rotated ninety degrees? Something about the patterns fluids 'slosh' in might make certain shapes viable while others are not.

[smjjames]

I have yet to see any signs of this system failing to provide power. I'll keep watching it, but it looks stable.

Let me ask one thing though Fossaman, was this with an ocean with waves and all or was it with a reservoir?

Artificial reservoir, actually. Not a real lake. (although it doesn't really matter, water is water)You'll notice that there are a bunch of fours and fives in the first picture? That's as the very bottom-most level of it was draining so I could do some work on the plumbing. By 'waves' I just mean the oscillations of the uneven water surface.

Hmm, I wonder if I was encountering the same effect when I observed it myself. I didn't have show fluid amounts on at the time, so we will never really know in that particular case. Its something that will have to be investigated since ocean waves push water around, so it could possibly create that effect in a channel.

I did use a bend or two similar to what you did to act as a wavebreaker, so its entirely possible.

[slink]

This is probably related to the observation that magma under a frozen body of water only keeps it melted if the magma level is less than 7 in part of the underlying reservoir.  Apparently transmission of heat requires moving magma, and this is accomplished only when the magma is level trying to equlibrate.