FREE ELECTRICITY
Inspired by the amount of water rushing by the weir and mill it seemed obvious to try and make some free electricity here.My research started in 2005 I hosted the first meeting of HEREFORDSHIRE HYDRO Feb 25th 2007

I had been to the meeting in Hereford thinking a local group had already been created because various press reports suggested that. It surprised me that only about a dozen people hung back and retired to the front right hand corner with a view to creating a local group. I concluded the other 135 people at the meeting were solely interested in making money out of those 12 !

Terminology and How To Get Started!
Imagine a waterfall. A stream comes along and falls over a cliff and lands in a pool below. The distance the water falls is measured. That is basically The Head. To generate electricity you need a head of 4 feet (1.25 m)or more. If you can direct a constant body of water down a pipe with a vertical drop of 4 feet or more into a turbine you will be in business. (You can buy chinese made turgo turbines for as little as £250 which will power your home if you have a waterfall handy)The Archimedian screw turbine will work in places where a vertical drop is not possible and a steep slope exists instead. The water vortex system works in places with close to zero head.To generate enough electricity to sell to the grid however requires one to work out how much water flows past your chosen site over a period such as a year. The measured flow rate is then used to help decide what system to choose.

The archimedian screw turbine is ideally suited to low head situations. The machinery is made in China but sold by a company in Germany.They wanted £60,000 in 2005 from me to fit one in my top sluice by the weir and I thought and said an old grain auger from a farm sale might do the job for a tenner.I was told not to infringe their patents!


Finding solutions and names of turbines is very difficult.But doing your own research via links to web sites broadens ones knowledge hugely.

www.herehydro.weebly.com if the link has disappeared find herehydro dot weebly dot com


Many links came to me via e mails as a result of Herefordshire Hydro Group Existing.Andrew Stobbart has very kindly reproduced them in our Hydro Group web site.

www.herehydro.weebly.com herehydro dot weebly dot com

Community Green Energy Initiatives work along these lines.

Find a weir or a waterfall that is not producing electricity.
Get a group or committee together in your local community and apply for a free feasability study. Follow this up selling 100,000 shares at £1 each to anyone in the community with spare cash and spend the £100,000 on an electricity turbine that produces £10,000 worth of electric fed into the national grid every year.Pay the owner of the waterfall or weir an annual rent and spend a bit every year on maintenance should leave £6000 to distribute amongst the shareholders.(6p per share=6% return on their investment).

There is currently something like this being put together in Leintwardine on the River Teme.We had a site meeting on Feb 28 2010.A choice of 3 different turbines were suggested.£100,000 was the most expensive.All 3 had different efficiences and therefore would have different financial returns.

There is nothing in the initiative that allows the village church or village hall to benefit so I suggest if any free money from the lottery is obtained,say £50,000, then the income generated by that grant money should go to the village & community overall.6p in the pound times £50,000 = £3000 per annum. Considering a village might make just a third of that holding a village fete or church flower festival, £3000 every year free money would be a massive boost for everyone in the community.