I remember a video of a very small hydro power demo, about a meter across, something along the lines of a gravitational water vortex power plant[0], but instead of the usual turbine they had a pretty big, uh, piece ("runner"?) in the middle of the chamber with the vortex, taking up most of the space. I believe the idea was to extract energy from very low flows. I seem to recall the people presenting it were Swiss, or something else vaguely germanic, but I'm not really sure.
Anyway, I've thought about this thing for years, decided to try to find it again, and mostly failed in my google-fu. I don't remember anything of the specific language used to describe it, just the visual. If anyone knows good search terms for this, I'm happy to hear those as well.
Thanks!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation_water_vortex_power_plant, discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16891441
Micro hydro power with turgo generator https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31199586
Micro hydro plant (I don't think it's this one but I remember reading this and being impressed) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3576109
At around page 13 of the results we run out of hydro and it starts returning hydra.