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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

If you live in Portland, your lights may now be partly powered by your drinking water [fastcoexist.com]. An ingenious new system captures energy as water flows through the city's pipes, creating hydropower without the negative environmental effects of something like a dam.

Small turbines in the pipes spin in the flowing water, and send that energy into a generator.
...
In Portland, one of the city's main pipelines now uses Lucid's pipes to make power that's sent into the grid. Though the system can't generate enough energy for an entire city, the pipes can power individual buildings like a school or library, or help offset a city's total energy bill. Unlike wind or solar power, the system can generate electricity at any time of day, regardless of weather, since the pipes always have water flowing through them.

The pipes can't generate power in every location; they only work in places where water is naturally flowing downward with gravity (if water is being pumped, the system would waste energy). But they have another feature that can be used anywhere: The pipes have sensors that can monitor water, something that utilities couldn't do in the past.

The turbine sections also contain sensors for monitoring water pressure and quality.

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