Been a while since you have received a newsletter—simple reason, have struggled to find anything newsworthy as the Hydro just carries on working, happily ticking over on its own, no demanding maintenance or projects. However, have finally manged to put together some information about the Hydro and other projects, eg Solar, Park Hydro and “the Future” that hopefully will be of interest.
I would imagine that none of you will have escaped the wet late winter and spring, but for Hydro Systems it has been great and for Congleton Hydro it has been a superb first half of 2024.
As you can see from the “key data” below we are ahead of plan, good news for income generation and music to the ears of Investors!!
Total Energy Generated (and sold!) since Start – Up, (October 2021).
(MWhrs as of end of June.)
Reliability of the system has been excellent with an overall Availability of >99%. Downtimes have been mostly limited to monthly greasing of Archies Upper Bearing and the regular de-trashing of the water intake. As always, the hard work and dedication of the De-trashing Volunteers are significant contributors to the overall availability. Well done and many, many thanks to you all—in fact all volunteers, who turn out in all weathers.
Of course, the weather has also been a great enabler for the continuing maturity of the results of all the hard work of our Rewilding Volunteers. My camera skills are not great, but you can easily see the dramatic “return to nature” over the past two years.
Another site enhancement was to finally get around to “landscaping” the entrance to Congleton Hydro and to make it fully “accessible”. We’ve also installed a couple of benches (purchased as derelicts via a local auction and restored by Volunteers). These provide some seating for participants waiting for a hydro tour to start and a welcome respite for walkers on their way to The Gritstone Trail.
These will also provide a welcome seat for a rest when we tackle the re-oiling of Archies bottom bearing in a couple of months’ time. You may recall that when we purchased Archie, we believed that the bottom bearing was sealed for life, but it turns out that an inspection and oil change is required every two years. Major operation, we need to isolate the incoming water flow and the river at the outfall, using stop logs and pumps. Archie’s bottom will then be jacked up to get access to the bearing. A learning exercise which should enable a swifter operation in future years. We are somewhat annoyed at ourselves, as Engineers we dot the “I’s and cross the t’s” but somehow, we misled ourselves about the longevity of the bottom bearing. At least, we don’t plan to call on the assistance of Sub-Aqua Divers, which is what Whitby-Esk Hydro had to do. If you have the time and inclination, a blow by blow account of their bottom bearing trials and tribulations can be found by following Bottom Bearing Failure & Replacement | Whitby Esk Energy.
The core “mission” of Congleton Hydro of course is to be non-profit making but to realise funds via an annual operating surplus, for local projects that will promote, enhance, educate etc aspects of the Environment and Sustainability in the Local Community. Our target is to achieve an annual surplus of £5000. As you will have noted from the above, the hydro’s performance during the past year has enabled us to meet our financial targets and at the AGM, held in the middle of May, members (Investors) of Congelton Hydro approved the setting aside of £5000 to be used to fund qualifying projects this year. For a number of reasons there was a small carry over from last year, which together with the generosity of some Investors, who asked for their capital and interest payments to be put into the Community Funds. This has resulted in approx. £7000 being made available to fund projects this year. The Community Fund Volunteers have reviewed and refined the processes of the scheme to make it widely visible to the community and easier to apply. This year’s scheme was launched at the end of May with applications required by the deadline of July 1st. The “poster ““for the scheme is shown below and has been widely advertised in the local press, social media and direct distribution to school, youth and community groups. Information on successful projects in our next newsletter.
We are still battling away to bring the “Park Hydro” to fruition. To refresh your memories, there is a Weir in Congleton Park which was originally used to provide motive power for Congleton’s Corn Mill in the 19th century. It is eminently suitable for the purposes of Hydro Generation and will realise approx. 50kwatts. Whilst there are many positives—ease of construction access,1km cable length to a Customer and 50yds from The Park Pavilion Café, who serve the world’s best bacon butties!!, it has been and still is, bedevilled with problems and obstacles that need to be overcome. We are gradually making progress with pursuing Local Authority Planning Approval and the necessary consents from the Environment Agency. Planning Committee consideration is now scheduled for August/September. Amongst items we are currently trying to resolve are BNG – Bio Net Gain and The Southern Stilletto Fly. BNG is a new requirement introduced in 2024 and Biodiversity net gain (BNG) is a way of creating and improving natural habitats. BNG makes sure development has a measurably positive impact (‘net gain’) on biodiversity, compared to what was there before development. In perhaps simple terms, we need to find a nearby development that we can improve with planting schemes that will hopefully offset any Bio loss resulting from our development. If you are so inclined, you can get more info via
Understanding biodiversity net gain – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
The Southern Stilletto Fly is apparently quite rare and inhabits riverbank shingle and of course sods law!!, loves the shingle on the banks of the River Dane passing through Congleton. Studies are currently underway to establish if we have any and if so, how do we protect them. The Southern flies are members of the generic stiletto fly family Therevidae – Wikipedia, and if you have rucks of time and interest, a fascinating overview of where they may be found in Cheshire can be read here Account of survey work for the stiletto-fly Cliorismia rustica conducted on Cheshire rivers in 2007 (buglife.org.uk).
You can never say that Congleton Hydro’s newsletters do not provide you with microscopic detail!!!!
Our core objective is to obtain both Planning and EA approvals and then we can positively attack the remaining barriers/obstacles i.e. diversion of a sewer overflow, protection of a Gas Main and solving the bit of land we want to use but nobody seems to own. All of this just shows how versatile Engineers have to be to get a job done—the core Engineering aspects are comparatively straightforward, although we will be left with the final piece of jigsaw—how the hell can we build it for the price needed to make the commercial equation balance.
Solar Update
Progress on our solar renewable energy project which are being administered through our sister CBS, DVCE-P Ltd, is good to mixed. Having raised over £450K through a community share offer, supplemented by a Key Fund grant and loan, the roof based solar schemes for schools and business are well on the way to fruition, although not without unexpected problems. A lease agreement with Astbury Golf club has been finalised and installation will take place, hopefully before the end of July. Negotiating similar agreements to allow the installation of solar schemes on eight schools have suffered a few unexpected hiccups. Nothing in life is simple and we have been stuck in a “triangle” of – schools, LA’s and DfE (Dept for Education). They all have either past or present interest in the roofs and have their own requirements as to the terms and conditions of fitting panels. It has been an iterative process as having “ticked off” the DfE conditions we then find they conflict with those of the local Authority, so it has been a drawn-out process. But slowly, slowly we have been making progress and it is hoped that final contracts will be agreed before the end of July that satisfy everybody.
We have secured permission from the Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) to connect all of the systems to the Grid. This is necessary because, if the customer is not consuming all of the power generated from the solar panels, we feed the excess back into the Grid. The DNO has to check that the local distribution network is capable of taking the excess power. This is not ideal, but the current electricity distribution network was not designed to take local sources of power. National Grid have a long-term project to reinforce the network for solar, wind, hydro, wave and tidal generation but this will take decades and cost billions of pounds. This is one of the reasons that the ‘standing charge’ on your electricity bill is increasing.
Although our solar panels will be generating power at Astbury Golf Club in August, the school’s installation programme will delay them benefiting from carbon free energy until the Autumn at the earliest. So, slow but positive progress.
Earlier this year, we made two applications to the recently introduced Community Energy Fund (CEF). The CEF has replaced the previous RCEF (Rural Communities Energy Fund), who previously gave us substantial funding. The CEF, which was launched last Autumn , with ourselves as “The Poster Group!!”, Communities at the heart of new fund to boost local growth and energy security – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk), aims to provide Stage One funds, to stimulate new community energy initiatives and to also help with funding to get projects “over the final hurdle” into reality, with Stage Two Funding. Our Stage Two funding application is to help us progress the Park Hydro through the planning stage and then into the preparation/launch of share offer etc. Our application has been approved in principle and is currently being evaluated to determine if it can transcend financial years given the ongoing delays in the planning approval process.
The Stage One application has just been fully approved and at a value of £40K is designed to help us investigate and evaluate “newer technologies and techniques” of power conversion that could possibly enable a much-reduced construction footprint (that minimise any BNG impact etc), reduced civils costs and perhaps enable “economic” realisation of generation from smaller Weirs. Working with Olly Paish from Derwent Hydro Developments Ltd, we will be focussing on three further Weirs on the River Dane in Congleton—Eaton Bank Weir, Washbrook Mill Weir and Congleton Park Weir (Park Weir is included as maybe alternate technologies could transcend some of the current issues). Core factors of the project are to
- Investigate and Survey differing technologies
- Develop preliminary designs
- Determine outline Civils design and construction
- Develop suitable business models
- Investigate land ownership etc
More of this in a future newsletter but a couple of the technologies we will be reviewing are
- Vortex Technology—aka that used on some Vac Cleaners, a good example is Eco-friendly hydropower for everyone, everywhere | Turbulent
- Siphon Technologies—similar in principle to a conventional vacuum system , again a good example Hydropower potential and development opportunities (mhylab.com)
In addition, we’ll look at “plastic “Archimedes Screws, and other iterations of conventional turbines e.g. Kaplan.
Talking about Archimedes Screws, an update from the “Energy from a bucket of water” education competition. You will hopefully recall that the idea was to refine this and get a competition between schools, locally at first and then maybe nationally. Progressed from buckets to water containers and all sorts of Heath Robinson contraptions through to finally, a 3D printed Archie.
Refined by a group of Siemens Apprentices (quality, enthusiasm, knowledge of today’s apprentices is fantastic), the project has now been trialled by four, year8/9 teams from the Fallibroome Academy in Macclesfield. Initially supplied with the basic code (future iterations of the project will see them developing their own), they 3D printed their own screws and built the electronics. They came together in competitive mode last week and whilst all four teams were winners, the top team managed to get over 40 seconds of “power” (LED lamp illumination) from three 2L bottles of water (a bucket full). In addition, they all gave presentations on their project and the results of audits they had done on their school’s energy usage (especially wastage!!). Parental consent has not yet been received to show photos of this great occasion. Following some iterative improvements to the overall project, the competition will be hopefully. extended later this year to the wider base of Congleton Schools and then eventually wider afield.
And finally…
Sadly, our colleague and friend Rob Lilley suddenly passed away on 1st January this year.
His enthusiasm and technical knowledge were an inspiration to us all and he coordinated our site visits and educational support projects. He will be sadly missed.
We would welcome Volunteer(s) to carry on the good work of Rob, especially that of helping with Public Tours and Education Liaison. Please contact us at admin@congletonhydro.co.uk for more information and to discuss further.
We hope you have found this Newsletter interesting and informative. Feedback, especially ideas for improvement and inclusion are always welcome via info@congletonhydro.co.uk.
Finally, have a great summer with scorching days but hopefully, we will have plenty of rain during the night!!
With best wishes from your Congleton Hydro and Solar Team.
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