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> and the same power it would take to boil eight kettles.

Newspaper-style units, but laughter aside, I tried to do the math.

If a kettle is rated at 2.5kW, then five minutes of usage (to boil a kettle, or for eight of them do a turn of the bridge) is 2.5kWh * (5/60) * 8 = 1.6kW.

My Nissan Leaf stores about 24kWh. So it's about 7% of a Leaf's battery to turn the wheel, or 10km of range. Given mass, perhaps it is finely balanced, and that seems more reasonable than I expected.

I am not an electricity expert and will get things mixed up ;)





> Given mass, perhaps it is finely balanced

Not only is it balanced, because the boats displace water when they enter, if one side has a boat and the other doesn't, it still balances.

Practical Engineering YouTube did a video "the hidden engineering behind the Falkirk wheel" two months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6ZOVbKQhY




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