Rivers to Power Hydro Electricity Energy in UK
Plans are afoot to generate enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of UK homes by using the natural and renewable sources of water.
A recent UK government study has earmarked up to 21,000 sites to build hydro electricity stations around the country that could generate enough power to supply up to 850,000 homes with all the electric energy they would require. The £4 billion estimated cost would come entirely from the private sector and those companies wishing to take advantage of the government’s quest to generate as much power as they can from renewable and green sources.
Currently there is a ton of red tape to go through if you wanted to set up your own hydro power system and this includes 4 licences from the environmental agency. A lot of this has to do with the environment itself not just because adding this turbine systems to a beautiful country side may be considered an eyesore but because fish migration patterns where they move up and down stream as the season progresses is something that needs careful consideration and management.
Such schemes are being developed with other renewable energy programmes which the basic energy bill payer currenty contributes £13.50 per year towards via their normal bill as a “hidden tax” – with the recent announcement of the feed in tariffs where by people can sell electricity back to the national grid from their own private renewable sources such as wind turbines and solar panels hydro power is also under this scheme. So anyone who operates a micro hydro turbine can receive 20p per kwh produced and sold on so a medium sized system that could power 32 homes would receive £25,000 per year which would be a nice earner.
Initial costs for such systems vary greatly but it is thought to cost between £100,000 and £150,000 for a system that can be added to a river without any additional costs for rerouting parts of a river that require changes because of fish migration patterns in which case costs could soar. Of course it’s the rivers with the most power that will probably be best suited to such schemes but with 5,000 sites across the UK already looked at and believed to be viable for a small to medium sized hydro turbine system then it looks likely to take off in the near future.
One homeowner has already built their own turbine system which produces enough electricity to power 152 homes and such schemes are set to rise because the government has set targets that 30% of the UK’s energy must be from renewable sources by 2020 and currently this figure only stands at 5.5% so there is much work to be done on this front if the targets are going to be met in time. Many people are also looking at old watermills and there are thought to be around 20,000 of these that could be turned easily into hydro energy systems. However as previously mentioned there are concerns over the fish in rivers and so much so that many groups are coming together to fight this initiative so it may face some opposition but as the government are behind this scheme you may see it in operation very shortly.
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