Romney Island Hydro-Scheme nears Completion

This is a dedicated thread for discussing article: Romney Island Hydro-Scheme nears Completion

One comment so far from an Angling Trust member that I found ammusing -

"790 tonnes of CO2 saved in a year! - That's 15 minutes of Heathrow production. So another 35,000 similar schemes and Heathrow will be carbon neutral....."

and as for my comments -
"The power generated by these ugly Archimedes units is so small that if they placed them on every weir on every river in the country they would still provide less than 0.5% of the total renewable energy requirements of the entire country whilst at the same time destroying valuable underwater ecosystems from which the rivers benefit.

"If the Queen is so keen on Green Energy perhaps she will consider having photovoltaic panels fitted to St George’s Church roof, they could make up the deficit energy requirements of the Castle."



Do they still behead traitors?

International flag-waving junkets and airmiles...

The great old lady has done many, to Britain's and the Commonwealth's and even America's benefit. But next year's Wills, Kate and Harry, "Let's get wazzed in Jamaica, the weather here is pants...", world tour....?

Jeff has a point, but I have yet to see any conclusive proof that hydros are any more damaging to coarse fisheries than pike. There are hydros everywhere in Sweden, and stacks of salmon going upriver to spawn - I've seen this with my own eyes. And the hydro in question enabled a fish ladder to be built.

And how have you worked out your 0.5%, Jeff? How many weirs are there in the country, what's the fall on each of them, what is the peak flow over each section of each weir.... you need to know all this and more to work out the 0.5%. But then again, 87% of all statistics are made up....

But surely the point is that the hydro powers the palace; it's not setting out to save the planet, just do something constructive to reduce carbon emissions. Jeff, and others, seem to fall into the mould of people who think that if a green technology can't instantly remove all need for conventional power stations, it isn't worth doing.

That's interesting Mark. So you think there may be a positive coming out of this? How about the Severn Barrage - is that going to be as bad as so many of us fear?

Like Mark I have long been an advocate of clean power generation (and got terrific flak from Clarksonite petrolheads on one site and accusations of being a tofu-wearing, sandal-toking hippy on a couple of others - I didn't want to do it, but I torched them for their trouble), for I was seen as one of those much-hated Jeremiahs crying "Doom!" from the wilderness, or as some sort of lost-the-plot elitist posho whom everyday considerations didn't touch when everyone else knew that flying and driving everywhere for fivepence was still the only real world, commonsense solution. Well, times and opinions change.

Hydel, IF it doesn't BLOCK rivers or SHRED travelling / migrating FISH, must be considered an option now (so, too, wave and tidal power). But as for a re-born Severn Barrage now being championed by a private consortium in these days of less strict planning regulations all in the cause of kickstarting ever-continuing economic growth (which, to my mind, got us into mess in which we now find ourselves in the first place - I remember the cleaner, road- and car-free "dirty" Britain of my childhood and youth, and I am not ninety), well...

Some well-designed, non-fish impacting turbines on some weirs - okay, fine; but a monster like the Severn Barrage - let's just say that I have seen what such affairs did to dozens of once-great mahseer rivers in India (killed them as fisheries and sources of fish for local people), seen, too, just what they are doing in the States at the moment - ripping out dozens of great dams...

geoffmaynard said:

That's interesting Mark. So you think there may be a positive coming out of this? How about the Severn Barrage - is that going to be as bad as so many of us fear?

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Depends on which barrage scheme you get; the best by far was an impoundment built right in the middle of the Severn, which would have had little or no effect on the mudflats, and less of a problem with siltation. Also the most expensive.

But here's the thing, Geoff. I was talking a couple of years ago to a firm which specialises in heat recovery equipment. They'd been asked to quote for a heat recovery system for a commercial laundry. They did the sums and the laundry could recoup all of its capital expenditure within six years by recovering heat from used water.

But the laundry didn't go for it because it was company policy to recoup all capital costs within five years. That's what the green lobby is up against.

These schemes have the potential to give us power for 50 years or more, but you can bet that, with this sort of payback, there isn't a stockbroker who'd buy the shares. If we had the same short-term mentality we have now in the Victorian era, we would have no railways at all.

MarkTheSpark said:

And how have you worked out your 0.5%, Jeff?

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It's not my figure, Mark, it comes from the ATr's Scientific Director, Dr. Alan Butterworth, but according to him I keep misquoting his figure which should read 0.2%.

Forget what the head is or the flow, the important part is what the EA themselves quote and that is how many megawatts these systems will generate. The Romney plant, I believe, will provide about half of Windsor Castle's requirements - WHEN it's working. There will be times in the summer (many more times this last summer) when the units will not have the flow to allow them to operate and other times of flood when there's too much flow and they have to be switched off.

The damage is caused by the removal of the energy in the waters, fish like dace, chub, and barbel require these flows and the energy (oxygenation) for breeding and it's in these weirs where the fish breed. Kill the energy, the fish no longer breed, the river dies - as far as fish are concerned. Unless the EA make it a policy to stock every weir each year with, say, 10,000 barbel, 20,000 chub, and 100,000 dace to replace the diminishing stocks.

Now imagine what the rod licence will cost as a result of Her Majesty saving a few quid on her lecky bill. Add to that the fact that she doesn't have to look at the bloody ugly things. Really is a case of NIMBY.

She could have had the same amount of free energy by installing photovoltaic panels on every roof in the castle and in the many grounds around it. Or what about a 350 ft high windmill in that yard outside her front door, that would produce far more power than the Hydros.


Even more: I'm all for green power, but I think we are all being sold a pup on this issue. Even the panels that people have had installed, I bet they haven't fully worked out yet how the weaken their roof timbers and who will be responsible if they get damaged in storms etc. It/they are all sold on the promise of maximum cost savings, but no one is being told what the real/hidden costs are.

Presently in serious discussions with a Time Lord to take me back here - http://www.theroyalwindsorwebsite.com/images01/TheThames/Romney/1930sDownstreamRomneyLock700.jpg - leave me for a few hours then get me home before anyone misses me...

I am all for progress and clean energy but I fear for the fantastic dace and roach at Windsor on the stretch upstream of this mincer which I saw on the bank before it was installed.

Is this what they were building downstream by the Victoria Bridge ? If not...what the hell is that ?

S-Kippy said:

Is this what they were building downstream by the Victoria Bridge ? If not...what the hell is that ?

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The London Eye:wh
Jerry