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June 2009
East Bridgford Community Energy
As reported previously, our plans for a hydro station at Gunthorpe Weir cannot proceed because the British Waterways Board have preferred a private company. Although this came as a big disappointment, it has not blunted our determination to make the village ‘greener’ and, at the same time, provide money for community projects within the village and overseas. We are exploring the possibility of building a wind turbine to provide enough electricity to power all the homes in the village. Hence our new name.
Finding a site that has plenty of wind, little or no visual impact for residents, does not interfere with radio and telecommunications and is sufficiently far away from the nearest houses that there is no noise pollution is going to be quite a challenge. Please let us know if you have any suggestions.
There is an increasing number of communities which have built or are building turbines for the benefit of the community. One of the largest is Westmill in Oxfordshire and their five turbines produce enough electricity to power more than 2,500 homes and save thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
The community raised £4.4M through a community share offer which is at present giving a return of 5% on investment (planned to increase to double figures once the bank loan has been paid off). The shares could be bought for anything between £1 and £20,000. Each person has only one share which entitles them to a vote in decisions about the project and the money raised from it (one member one vote). In this way, the community owns the turbines and has full control over them. But this is just one way of funding such a project, another is to seek grants and a bank loan enabling all of the profits to go community developments rather than to member shareholders. A third alternative is to have a mix of bank loans and shares.
Our group is at present seeking funding (£700) to become an Industrial and Provident Society for the benefit of the community. This means that all profits will go to the community and/or member shareholders. Until we are a legal entity, we cannot apply for grants and bank loans.
Members of the group are as follows:
John Chater, David Atkins, Robert Baker, Derek Chick, Peter Foss, Alistair Howie, Keith Maywhort, George Warren.
Do let us know what you think of our ideas.
John Chater
01949 20882
March 2009
Disappointing news for the Hydro project
Our plans to build a hydro generating station at the Gunthorpe weir have come to a halt, perhaps permanently.
We have a promising pre-feasibility study and no serious objections from planners and the Environment Agency. The Co-op Bank are keen to give us a loan for a substantial part of the capital cost so we have jumped many of the hurdles to progress. The British Waterways Board, whose land we would need to lease, told us that provided we could show that our scheme would not damage the weir, river banks or navigation, we stood every chance of getting their agreement. They even started discussing with us how much we would have to pay for the lease.
So it came as a great surprise to be told recently that they had submitted reports on our scheme and that of a competitor private company (wanting to build on the other side of the weir) to their commercial department. Their decision is to favour the private company who, we believe, is looking to build hydro stations on every weir from Nottingham to the Humber.
This puts an end to our project unless the private company fails to get planning permission, licenses etc or they decide not to go ahead because of financial reasons. The weir is a low one and not as economically attractive as many of the others especially if, as we understand, they are not intending to use Archimedes screw turbines. The Waterways Board tell us that the competitor will have to start construction within 2 years otherwise, we will be up for consideration again.
All this is very disappointing especially after two years’ effort and I would like to thank members of our group for their work and involvement : Dave Short, Robert Baker, David Atkins, Derek Chick, Peter Foss, Keith Maywhort and George Warren. We would like to thank the Parish Council for their support of our project by paying for our pre-feasibility study (£1300).
There is still hope that we can resurrect the project in the future but some of us are now looking at the possibility of building a large wind turbine, which would cost about the same as the hydro turbines and generate a similar amount of electricity. We fully appreciate that this will be controversial unless it is sited well away from the village. If anyone would like to offer help please contact me.
John Chater
Chair of Hydro~gen
Tel. (01949) 20882
March 2009
REPORT ARCHIVE
January 2008
New Hope for a Hydro Generating Scheme
A
presentation on
the possibility of the village building and running a hydro power
station next to the weir at Gunthorpe was made to the Parish Council
Meeting held on 8 January 2007.
For details of the presentation click here.
A Steering Group, led by John Chater, was established with backing from
the Parish Council.
In September2007,it was reported
that the project was not economically viable but we hoped it would become so in
the future with new technology or increased electricity prices.
These changes
have happened more quickly than we anticipated. A new type of turbine called the
Archimedes screw turbine has come onto the market which is designed for low
head weirs like our own. Not only is the
new technology cheaper than the old, but the civil engineering costs of
installing it would be less. Instead of an estimated £2.0– 2.5M capital cost,
the new scheme would be in the region of £1.5M, yet generate the same amount of
electricity. At the same time, the price
of the electricity has increased from 8.5p to 9.8p per unit.
The Steering Group is therefore
pressing ahead with a new feasibility study which we hope will enable the
project to proceed and realise our three aims:
- To
help combat climate change
- To
raise funds for our own community
- To
provide funds to help overseas communities worst affected by climate change.
John Chater
Jan 2008
March 2008
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