Pelton Wheel

The Pelton wheel is a water impulse turbine. It was invented by Lester Allan Pelton in the 1870s. The Pelton wheel extracts energy from the impulse of moving water, as opposed to its weight like traditional overshot water wheel. Although many variations of impulse turbines existed prior to Pelton's design, they were less efficient than Pelton's design; the water leaving these wheels typically still had high speed, and carried away much of the energy. Pelton's paddle geometry was designed so that when the rim runs at ½ the speed of the water jet, the water leaves the wheel with very little speed, extracting almost all of its energy, and allowing for a very efficient turbine.