Abingdon Hydro Project

(put swizzle in) - That's the way to do it.

On trhe face of it much more sensible and practical than wind turbines. There's always some water going over the weir all day and all night.

I had a brief look at some of the documents - a bit of a pain as the file extensions were missing! That said a very clean site, 'specially as it's (presumably) been done on a budget.

What are the costs, I wonder.

Amusing to see it's an abstraction licence - didn't notice any details about putting the water back in??
 
Interesting.Seems a good idea,
Anybody got any thoughts about the fact that when energy is extracted from the water the flow speed is going to reduce,possibility of more silt being deposited out of the water and falling to the river bed.This will obviously need shifting at some point. !
Have I missed something somewhere.There is a long history of dams silting up and becoming redundant due to this.
Would have thought that Teddington or Richmond might be best location for this sort of thing simply due to amount of moving water at these locations.
 
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An old freind, now sadly deceased lived in an old mill on the upper Thames. The mill water wheels were still there along with the sluices and paddle gear, albeit requiring some renovation. Being a self made man with a bit of dosh and the time and inclination to do it he investigated the possibility of putting generators on the mill wheels. Technicaly not difficult-the problem was planning and the power companies. It was stopped dead in the water, much to his disgust. Fast forward 23 years to the current green philosophy and he got a grant to do the work from somewhere. Unfortunatly he died and the dream died with him. I have been in a modest water powered generator, again an old water mill in the Czech Republic, not far from the village of Moravany in East Bohemia. I was on a Speedway racing gig and was with a rider who worked at the Alderney power station. He was very taken with the German made-1909-hydraulic governor that controlled the phaseing of the AC current. All in all it showed how local energy production from modest sources can be benificial to the local area, and how reliable it could be-this one was in its 90th year of providing electricity. The water was suplied from a quarter acre-ish mill pool fed by a modest stream. Food for thought perhaps.
 
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