More blackout warnings!

[cromwell]

New Mill - that's not too far off, is it?
That is very interesting, as well as frustrating. Tbh climate change or no, it still needs doing. There are thousands of weirs all over the country that could be up and running very quickly. You could run them off reservoirs, too.

[Workingman]

I was looking at the tech specs for that type of screw. It only needs a 3m head of water to operate and extracts power at 70% of potential. On some rivers they could be staged, similar to canal locks.

Some time back I wrote to my MP about these micro-hydro schemes but only got a bland form letter reply. He has lost my vote.

Eta. Another type is a rotating weir. It acts a bit like an upside down waterwheel though tens of yards wide. The top of the weir is a series of blades and as the river flows over the blades turn. These can be very powerful depending on the size of the river and its flow rate.

[Suff]

Imagine if we had 10,000 of them. The cost would be about £2.5bn and they would produce 1.55GWh. 10,000 sites spread over the whole British isles is easily doable.

And provide.... Erm..... Construction jobs.....

They all talk about estuary barriers and forget about the thousands of advanced water mills we had all over the country up until Victorian times. It should be a holistic approach and is, instead, a big business approach.

Trying to get that through to them is really not happening. The lights are on....

[TheOstrich]

Interesting. There's a modern Archimedes screw turbine situated next to Arkwright's 1781 cotton mill in Rocester, which in now part of the JCB's apprentice engineering academy, and there's a decent picture of it here (.pdf article):

http://www.made.org.uk/images/uploads/JCB_Pages_PDF.pdf

It's literally next door to the soccer ground, which I visited last August. The Archimedes screw is fascinating - very impressive piece of equipment close up!

[Workingman]

Thanks Ossie, the JCB one is very interesting in that it lies nearly flat, that is why, at 36' x 10', it is slightly bigger than Torrs for a similar output. What it does show quite clearly is that these things can be placed just about anywhere. They could even be prefabricated off site and simply slotted in.

I am also pretty certain that with a bit of modification they could even be used in emergencies.