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Adrian Midgley (Gmail) wrote: > > Indeed. When I walk around the Quay I think that the water going over > the weir whcih used to power a mill could at least light the quay. > > I spoke, the council are considering mini-hydroelectric plants on up to > 4 of their weirs on the Exe. Seems a good idea to me. I'm guessing run-of-river hydro in the Exe would be pretty erratic as a power source. The river near Exeter is fairly level, which makes it harder to extract useful power, and means that fish are currently able to go upstream with little difficulty. Devon Wildlife Trust have a generator at Cricklepit mill, the report below suggests it won't generate enough power to meet the needs of the small DWT office it is underneath, although my suspicion is that they might be able to reduce their power needs to fit if they were keen, and I dare say that stream isn't at capacity. The report looks at other renewable sources for Exeter. Apparently photovoltaic cells on all suitably aligned roofs would cost nearly a billion and provide about a MW, for comparison EDF energy plans to add 6.4GW of capacity with its new nuclear plants. Nothing in this convinces me that Exeter wouldn't be better drawing it's power from the grid, although I have a nostalgic yearning for digestion as a power source. http://www.exeter.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=11811&p=0 Oh and a photo of South West Water buring up some spare methane. http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonwaters/3051790443/ -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html