99 Year Old Hydroelectric Plant Coming Back Online
In our search for new clean technology, it’s important to pay attention to inventions of the past. A tiny hydroelectric plant in the Yorkshire Dales area of England is coming out of a 60 year retirement next summer to create renewable energy.
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The Linton Falls hydroelectric plant will work with the use of two Archimedean screws. Originally designed to carry water up as they rotate, the screws will generate renewable energy by spinning at high speeds when river water flows through them.
The plant will generate a reasonable 510,000 kWh of energy each year— not bad considering the structure has been sitting dormant for decades. Eventually, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority wants to use up to 50 sites for similar schemes.
While hydroelectric dams may not be appropriate everywhere, the Linton Falls plant proves that we should pay attention to the tools we already have before building new ones.
Photo Credit: The UK Daily Mail
It depends. A dam-based hydro installation can indeed be a disaster, especially those built during the “if it runs, dam it” philosophy of the mid-20th century, but there are other options. For instance, so-called “run of the river” plants use a dike to only divert part of the river water, pipe it downstream and run it through a turbine. Also, in high-volume rivers like the US’s Columbia, less inundation is required to generate a LOT of electricity. We have a long ways to go in finding ways to create the energy that our lavish (compared with the rest of the world) lifestyles require.
AS long as this is dont right then it cant be a bad thing.. its better than poring more pultants into the air we breath..
what ever we do we cant keep every one happy.. no one wants wind turbines on land.
we cant keep knocking back these ideas. some thing has to give.
I believe what nna says is true for most large hydroelectric dams. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case in this instance.
By what I see, this dam will only divert a small portion of the river to the screws. This will allow the rest of the river to flow normally, allowing fish to swim right past the facility and up/down the river as they normally would.
BUT! If they _are_ planning on diverting _all_ water through the screws, that’s a whole other story all together and something that needs much more scrutiny before even considering doing so. In that case, I’d have to agree with nna. I don’t think it would be worth it considering the ecological damage that it could cause just so a power company would claim they’re “green”.
nna,
It’s NOT like they are building a new dam - look at the photo - there are TONS of dams sitting around from the early industral age that are “abandoned” - basically, 100% of the water goes over the spillway (see photo above). All they really do is repair the penstocks (where the water would go to a generator) and put in modern generators - tada - low cost, NO impact (because the dam is already there) power.
Many of these dams supplyed mechanical water wheel power 100-150-200 years ago, and were abandoned when “cheap” power became available from the power company. It’s now worth maintaining these existing sources due to the increased cost of power. In fact, I know of at least 1 dam in NY where the water just flows through the penstocks, or over the spillway, year round - the wheels are gone, there is a chunk missing out of the spillway - add some modern wheels, a bit of modern electonics to make nice reliable 60Hz, and tie it to the grid
BTW, that is also another factor that makes using these old dams possible - modern electronics. A lot were given up because they could not produce clean power 365×24 - some times they go dry - and having a crew that sat there, having to regulate the generators to make clean 60Hz was hard, and expensive - today, modern electronics make it a “set and forget” (well, inspect 1x/week or whatever) task, just like wind or solar power
Seems to me that the situation here is already established; and that it is using the scenario as an example that such setups of ‘flooding’ is not necessary in all cases.
It is perhaps closed minded to think that ‘natural’ setups acnnot be harnessed for the use of hydroelectricity rather than considering that there are flowing streams, rivers and ‘bodies’ of water that occur which can be used in this manner.
Not all setups have to be ‘man made’ for them to be usable in this way and I believe this article is pointing that out.
Re: nna
I think you’re missing the point of this article. The hydroelectric dam in this article already exists, so the damage has been done and according to your statement, cannot be undone. Why not recommission this plant and actually put this existing structure to productive use? The argument in this piece is to re-use what we already have instead of constantly building new structures.
And Nuclear power is the best option??!!??
Redeveloping older, smaller sites can be an effective way of adding to the baseload of any energy system. What the previous commentator fails to realize is that hydropower is a unique form of energy. It has the ability to respond both to increasing demand by increasing output as well as providing base capacity. While there are some environmental effects, the facility in the article is quite small and therefore it will not impact the landscape in such drastic ways as the previous commentator alludes to.
It is not useful to paint all energy systems with such a wide paintbrush of environmental destruction. In these troubling times much can be done to create an integrated power system with minimal environmental effects. An example of such an approach can be seen in Ontario, Canada with its new Endangered Species Legislation that seeks to provide the most aggressive approach in the world to protect species at risk.
This article only talks about reviving an existing hydroelectric plant. Not building new and flooding new areas. Where I live, in the Northeast US, there are probably hundreds of abandoned dams left to rot. Flooding is on the rise in downstream communities as these dams disintegrate. Why not repair/maintain them and put them to work generating electricity? It makes sense to me!
So would you rather a coal fired power plant open up?