Canal water power evokes Phoenix’s past
Natel Energy Inc. is working toward a process to generate power from the movement of canal water and take it to homes and businesses.
The company is using a test site in Buckeye to show what its technology can do. Joe Blankenship, the company’s director of sales and marketing, said Natel is taking a technology invented in the 1970s and, because of a renewed push for alternative forms of energy, seeking to bring it to a larger audience.
Blankenship is running the company along with the inventor, Daniel Schneider, and his children, Gia and Abe Schneider. They have done four demonstration projects over the years to prove the technology, but recently started a fifth project to further the study: a 12-kilowatt hydropower station on a canal of the Buckeye Water Conservation and Drainage District.
“The canals around Phoenix used to be used for power generation at one time,” Blankenship said.
The generation theory Natel uses is identical to large facilities such as the Hoover and Roosevelt dams: Falling water is captured by a device that looks like a propeller, which turns a generator to create energy.
Read the full story in the Phoenix Business Journal.
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