The Pelton wheel or Pelton Turbine is an impulse-type water turbine invented by American inventor Lester Allan Pelton in the 1870s. The Pelton wheel extracts energy from the impulse of moving water, as opposed to water's dead weight like the traditional overshot water wheel. Many earlier variations of impulse turbines existed, but they were less efficient than Pelton's design. Water leaving those wheels typically still had high speed, carrying away much of the dynamic energy brought to the wheels. Pelton's paddle geometry was designed so that when the rim ran at half the speed of the water jet, the water left the wheel with very little speed; thus his design extracted almost all of the water's impulse energy—which made for a very efficient turbine.

The Walchensee Power Plant is a hydroelectric power station in Bavaria, Germany. It is a storage power station that is fed water from the Walchensee which is then released into the Kochelsee. The installed capacity is 124 MW with an annual production of 300 GWh. The power plant is south of Kochelsee, about 14 km (8.7 mi) from the village of Walchensee. It is one of the largest of its kind in Germany and has been owned by Uniper Kraftwerke GmbH since 2016.