Online Fellwalking Club - Coniston Hydro Electric Scheme

Coniston Hydro Electric Scheme

Written by Peter Burgess

Sunday, 08 March 2009

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Coniston Hydro - intake

For centuries humans have realised that running water has held the potential to power a variety of tasks such as the milling of wheat. It was not until 1881 that hydropower was used to produce electricity in Britain. The monks of St Benedict's Abbey in Fort Augustus were first off the mark, constructing an 18 kW power station using the flow of a nearby stream. This provided power not only to the Abbey but also to the 8oo people of the town.

The largest hydroelectric scheme in the UK today is Dinorwic in Wales, commissioned in 1983 and with an installed capacity of 1,728 MW. However, this pumped storage scheme still requires off-peak electricity to pump water back to the higher reservoir and although reaching full capacity in ten seconds, is only able to supply short term power output at times of peak demand.

Upstream view

It is however, the much smaller river schemes that continue to offer potential for development and investment opportunities. These schemes do not require a dam to be constructed; instead, water is typically drawn from a stream or river via an intake weir and then passes through a pipe before entering a turbine to generate electricity. In the Lake District, these dams and weirs are often already in place as a result of previous industrial use or as a result of similar hydro-electric schemes in the past. We must remember that the area is a product of industrial exploitation and nowhere is this more evident than in the locale about the Coppermines Valley. During the Victorian era there were lots of hydro electric schemes in the national park. Today there are just six functioning power plants and therefore the potential to develop more is a very viable option.

Whilst hydroelectric development is a complex and specialist field it continues to offer long term benefits of efficiency and virtually carbon free electricity generation. In the mountains as well it could diversify income for hill-farmers at a time when market prices for livestock continues to be extremely volatile. Many of the older Lakeland sites had turbines fitted by the Kendal-based firm Gilbert Gilkes and Gordon Limited which employs 130 people in the town. Hydropower therefore continues to merit serious consideration as an attractive investment opportunity for the local area.

Currently, windfarms are favoured because the Government sees them as a speedy way of meeting its 2020 renewable energy targets. This has led to a cluster of controversial windfarm applications in South Lakeland, the Lune Valley and Eden. Recently the proposed windfarm at Borrowdale was thwarted by concerned groups and individuals and many will be aware of the Berrier Hill scheme east of Blencathra which has generated similar controversy. Unlike wind farms small scale hydro schemes are considered to be low impact and sympathetic to the environment which has the broad support of national park planners.

Downstream

Planners said they expected more hydro-electicity applications in the future, and said they saw harnessing the area’s mountain streams as “the way ahead” towards producing more renewable energy. Friends of the Lake District are also broadly positive towards such schemes and they "encourage development of such schemes where they have minimal landscape impact."

In Coniston the small-scale scheme that has been operating since February 2007, involved replacing the existing concrete weir on the beck, making it 55cm higher and facing it in local stone. Water is now channelled via an old intake on the left bank about 150 metres upstream of Miners Bridge. The development is so visually unassuming that many people walking past, bound for the higher fells of Coniston, don't even notice the installation as they pass.

The UK proportion of electricity produced from hydro power is a meagre 1% and most large-scale hydro schemes are in Scotland. Unfortunately the potential for future large scale developments are just about exhausted. However, there is still potential for these micro-hydro plants that could supply local and remote markets without the need for large scale transmission lines either. Alongside other options such as biomass (wood burning from local plantations) the procurement of micro-hydro schemes could make some parts of Lakeland almost carbon neutral; for the local population anyway. Although these schemes at national level may be just a drop in the ocean at least in Lakeland, hydro power is making a comeback.

Coniston Hydro Electric Scheme - Explanatory Video:

The advantage is that it is producing green energy and it is reinstating something that was previously in place - and it’s not as visually intrusive as wind turbines. James Cropper on hydro-power

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