Green Building Forum - Our rivers and power generation

Our rivers and power generation

windy lamb — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:12:05 +0100

Back to the EA.... If a ditch has water in it it is classed as a water coarse and, therefore, the EA are the enforcing authority for all the environmental legislation. Ted is right about the ditch dredgings being classed as controlled waste and requiring the EA to give you permission to spread that waste on your land adjacent to the ditch!!!
No one has inspected the ditches but as soon as I spend money on a turbine they would.

I met a chap from the Brecon Beacons who installed a 10kW microhydro system with no plannoing, no licenses and no nothing. He was invited by Farming Connect (quango paid from Gov. funds) to give talks to other farmers. Shit hit the fan when a member of the audience was from the EA and another from the national park authority. Happily they couldn't make him remove anything after all the publicity he had gained and the fact that no-one could see it. Now there is a Co-op to advise other farmers about micro-hydro so that "the same mistakes aren't made" By that I think they mean not getting planning and not paying for the licences!!

Our rivers and power generation

SteamyTea — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:23:52 +0100

Posted By: windy lamb"the same mistakes aren't made"

What is really needed to save time is "the same mistakes made again".

Our rivers and power generation

JSHarris — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:24:30 +0100

I can understand the need for a licence and planning consent if you are significantly diverting a watercourse, abstracting the water and using it elsewhere or undertaking an activity where there is a risk of polluting the water in some way.

What I can't understand is why these things are needed for something that has near zero impact, like a microturbine.

If I understand the above correctly, someone who digs a ditch on their land for better drainage has then created a watercourse (assuming the ditch fills with run off water) and subjected themselves to licensing etc. Seems barking mad to me, and ripe for a bit of sensible reform.

Years ago I rented a cottage for a few months in Scotland. The back garden was a steep bank of rock, with a spring coming from it part way up. The owners had created a pool to collect the spring water, with a pipe to drain it away under the house. Presumably they should have had a licence to do this, too, even though they did it to stop damp getting in the back of the house.

Our rivers and power generation

djh — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:54:38 +0100

Posted By: windy lambthe ecological survey will indicate that the header pond may be a suitable habitat for Great Crested Newts

I was pleasantly surprised recently by a GCN and water vole survey I read which used the word 'pragmatic' and concluded no action was necessary:

"At a national herpetological meeting earlier in 2008 Dr Jim Foster (Natural England) requested that consultants take a pragmatic approach with regard to the need for licensing and that he wished not to see risk aversion. .. This point was also highlighted in a letter dated May 2008 from Natural England".

With regards to why no action was necessary, the landowner was lucky because:

- the presence of fish and a pet terrapin, which eat young GCN
- deep shade and much leaf-fall not like by GCN
- steep banks are not like by water vole
- many local cats, which kill water voles

Food for thought there.

PS buckyp's website works for me. It shows me a nice photo and some text and also says "You are viewing the text version of this site. To view the full version please install the Adobe Flash Player and ensure your web browser has JavaScript enabled." Has that been done since everybody commented? Well done either way; its nice to see a site with an alternative version.

Our rivers and power generation

kev67 — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:47:26 +0100

Last year, I attended a sort of conference/seminar thing at Henley River Museum about some of the micro hydro schemes planned for the Thames. It does seem like the environmental agency has been fighting them tooth and nail in the past. There was one scheme planned for Romney Weir near Windor Castle, I believe. The director of the new company charged with installing it apparently told the Duke of Edinburgh that he would get it built the year previously. "No, you won't," replied Prince Phillip, "They've been trying to build it for twenty years." Apparently, the EA official who was responsible for that stretch of river was a keen angler, so resistant to anything that might impact fishing. He seems to have been an over-my-dead-body kind of guy. The chap sat next to me at the conference told me that on another occasion this chap had to be bundled out of a meeting after upsetting the Prince. I don't know how true that is. Archimedes Screws have been demonstrated to be harmless to fish, and if they're being installed at old water mill sites then I can't see the problem.

Another time I attended a talk given by the manager of the Sonning Mill theatre, which installed a micro hydro turbine a few years ago. He faced a lot of resistance from the environment agency, and had to jump through a lot of hoops, but being a forceful and determined chap, he eventually got his way. Theirs is not an Archimedes Screw, but there's a mesh in front of the opening to keep out leaves, trash and also fish.

Our rivers and power generation

Joiner — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:53:36 +0100

buckyp's website works for me, too.

Our rivers and power generation

windy lamb — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:09:09 +0100

djh - English Nature may be pragmatic but tell that to the Countryside Council for Wales. I was involved with drilling a borehole...because it was within 300m of a known GKNewt pond we had to get a licence from CCW which stated that an ecologist (Â£200/day) had to be present at all times whilst the rig was on site so he could move any newts which may enter. Bearing in mind the site was a field, cut the week before for silage, and the drill rig was towed behind a landrover, and when erected had a footprint of less than 5 square meters. Apparently, it was not sufficient for me to inspect the drill site before we started and telephone the newt man if I saw a newt which he could then come and pick up and move (I'm not allowed to pick them up because I haven't a licence). Anyway, on the day of the drilling I didn't see any newts but I was able to show the newt man several dozen frogs which had been cut up by the mover and were nicely dried in the summer sun. Apparently the farmer didn't need a licence to cut his silage. Absolute madness.

JSHaris- you only need an abstraction licence if you use the water for something. If the cottage owners had put a tiny water wheel in to run some fairy lights then they would need one.

Oh and another thing, if I wanted to stock the header pond with fish, they would have to be native fish (fair enough) - I could only get them from a licensed stockist and he could only sell them to me if I had the correct licence to buy them. You guessed, both licenses come from the EA.
We are a nation of bureaucrats not shopkeepers!

Our rivers and power generation

windy lamb — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:17:23 +0100

Sorry, the frogs were cut up by the mower not the mover! Must be that red mist descending in front of my eyes.

Our rivers and power generation

tony — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:41:41 +0100

Out of interest how much do these licences cost?

Our rivers and power generation

JSHarris — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:47:08 +0100

Posted By: windy lambWe are a nation of bureaucrats not shopkeepers!

I think the real problem is that we are a nation of rule-followers. We lie back and allow our government to create crazy rules and then are stupid enough to blindly follow them, albeit with a bit of moaning.

I've a friend who lives in France and the attitude there is refreshing. They have heaps of rules but pretty much everyone ignores any they think are daft. The great thing is that nothing much more than a shrug results from breaking rules like this 99% of the time.

Our rivers and power generation

buckyp — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 19:17:41 +0100

An abstraction license is about Â£1600 I think, we are pretty much self funded at the moment so all costs associated with our project come out of donations and our pockets.
For those who have chosen to criticize our web site, please remember that we have done this ourselves with no in depth knowledge of web site building and no glut of funds to enable us to pay someone to build it for us, I must say I am rather proud of our effort!

Our rivers and power generation

jamesingram — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 19:58:32 +0100

buckyp, looks good for a DIY job to me,
dont worry about them , they seem a bit IT intense to me

Our rivers and power generation

billt — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:48:32 +0100

From the EA website:

"6.1 The Annual Charge shall be payable in respect of a licence under the Act to abstract water which is for the time being in force, except as provided for in paragraph 6.2 below.
6.2 The Annual Charge is not payable in respect of water authorised to be abstracted:
6.2.1 for direct use in the production of electricity or any other form of power by generating station or apparatus of a capacity of not more than five megawatts; or
6.2.2 from inland waters which the Agency or its predecessors has certified as having an average chloride content in excess of 8,000 milligrams per litre;
6.2.3 under a temporary licence; or
6.2.4 under a transfer licence."

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Abstraction_scheme_2011-12.pdf

If the generator is less than 5MW there is no annual charge; I'd expect water used for generation to be returned to the water course so it would be used under a transfer licence, so no charge there either.

Sorry, I wasn't criticising your site, not tried to look at it. I was just ranting about the thoughtless use of flash, which is much too common.

Our rivers and power generation

tony — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 22:59:22 +0100

Bucky, is there room for me there? If we built two 100kW generators side by side I would be happy to give you the lower rate feed in tarif from mine and keep the difference so I dont have to work any more if you help me with a funding partial temporary loan.

Why not do 2 x 100 instead of 1 x 200?

Our rivers and power generation

wookey — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 02:51:34 +0100

buckyp. There is nothing 'wrong at my end' (so far as I know), and I'm not blocking flash. However I haven't installed adobe's proprietary flashplayer either (because they don't make one for my platform, and even if they did I don't trust them enough to give them complete access to my computer) - I'm using the Free Software/Open Source tools Gnash and Lightspark. You have clearly only ever tried viewing your site with Adobe's proprietary stuff because it doesn't work even slightly with the alternatives.

I see that you barely understand the problem/issue here despite the next 3 posters all pointing out they they have issues with it too for different but related reasons. OK, fair enough - we can't all be experts but the point is that the tech you have chosen for your site is poor. Yes it looks nice where it works, but that's not the only criterion. It prevents whole swathes of people seeing your site (geeks, the visually impaired, iphone and ipad users) - did you intend to stop all those people seeing what you are doing?

It shouldn't cost you anything to change the site so that flash isn't essential for navigation, or better still dump it entirely (closed, proprietary standards used as primary interfaces online were always a dumb idea). I don't know who wrote it for you, or what tech you are using, but I'm sure I could put you in touch with people who can tell you what needs to change in more detail than 'get rid of the flash', which is the simple version. I'm not critisising because it's 'amateurish' - plenty of big expensive websites are broken in just the same way - I'm trying to help you understand that you have made poor choices and excluded a fair number of people. It's probably not hard to fix, but telling me that my computer is wrong is rather missing the point: It's my computer you want your site visible on, and right now it isn't.

It works for djh because he has javascript turned off entirely. I can see your site too if I do that, but I'm not quite as hardcore as Dave :-). And in fact you have a perfectly good website. Just bin the flash version and it'll work for everyone. If I pretend to be an iphone it works too, so you have a non-flash fallback there too. So actually things are nothing like as bad as they seemed initially - but that's the point - the user can't tell the difference between total garbage and a quite flexible and well-designed setup with fallbacks if all they see is a big blank rectangle.

Apologies to people who wanted to talk about hydro for this diversion into net standards, but it's a fairly rare opportunity to get to the responsible person and explain the issue. I have resisted going into too much detail here, but can expound at great length to anyone actually interested. :-)

Our rivers and power generation

Joiner — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 07:00:48 +0100

Our rivers and power generation

buckyp — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:41:21 +0100

Posted By: tonyBucky, is there room for me there? If we built two 100kW generators side by side I would be happy to give you the lower rate feed in tarif from mine and keep the difference so I dont have to work any more if you help me with a funding partial temporary loan.

Why not do 2 x 100 instead of 1 x 200?

We're actually putting in 3 x 100kw generators, all profit after dividends/ bank loan payments have been made will be used to help fund other community projects within the town, so not really any room for additional screws!

Wookey, I follow Joiner on this, I am computer literate but your explanation goes beyond my comprehension of website building! At some point in the future when we have funds available we will get someone to build a site for us but in the meantime we get plenty of contacts through our site so it is obviously working for many people, we may be losing a few but the support we are getting is very encouraging! All I suggest is that you come back to the site in a year or two and then your system may be able to see it in it's entirety!

Our rivers and power generation

JSHarris — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:42:14 +0100

It sounds like an interesting project, but I'd suggest that a significant number of people who may well be most interested in reading about it will be those who have the nouse to have ensured their PCs are set up to either not automatically run dubious (in my opinion) proprietary software (like Adobe Flash) and may also have disabled aspects of Javascript by default. Add in that a larger than might be expected number of those people who may be interested in environmental issues may also be Open Source enthusiasts (a fairly reasonable assumption) who again may not be able to see your site because it needs users to install and enable a closed source, proprietary, bit of software, and you could be denying access to more of your potential target audience than you think.

Many interested in green issues will be running open source, non-proprietary, operating systems and web browsers, as borne out from comments here so far. Building a web site that relies on users having installed software from the likes of Adobe (which will is not Open Source and demands that all users agree with their commercial terms of use before it will install) is not a wise move, in my view.

Our rivers and power generation

SteamyTea — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:46:08 +0100

I would love to run everything in Open Source but the hardware I buy for monitoring often does not have suitable drivers/software. It is a real pain.
Was at a supplier who told me that their entire office was now 'linux', but not all the hardware was.
Have asked someone to help me out with it though.

Our rivers and power generation

DamonHD — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:04:01 +0100

I had a junior Web designer join my team in dot-com madness days who had a site blank to anyone without Flash installed and who told me proudly that his motto was "use Flash or f*** off", which was particularly stupid as we developing stuff for then-very-weedy mobile phones. If I'd hung around long enough he'd have been out the door as soon as I could have pointed out the disability-discrimination and other aspects never mind the total technology fail.

Rgds

Damon

Our rivers and power generation

windy lamb — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:25:08 +0100

I'm beginning to think building a web site is more complicated that putting in a micro-hydro!

Anyway, the bloke from the EA said I would have to have an abstraction licence but didn't say anything about the cost. The licence may, as "billt" said, not have an annual fee but getting one sure costs. The Ecological stream survey and hydrological surveys don't come free and they won't take my word for it.

I also have a friend in France (farmer) who says that almost all the rules are ignored - they laugh at the way we gold plate the rules from Brussels.

Our rivers and power generation

JSHarris — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:37:51 +0100

Posted By: windy lambI also have a friend in France (farmer) who says that almost all the rules are ignored - they laugh at the way we gold plate the rules from Brussels.

A French friend tried to explain this to me once. He was puzzled as to why the British were always complaining about rules coming from the EU. The source of his puzzlement eventually surfaced; apparently many French don't consider EU Directives to be rules that have to be obeyed, just guidance that they may or may not choose to follow. The chap was quite amazed that we took every EU Directive and made it part of our law and was insistent that he didn't think this was what the EU really intended us to do.

Our rivers and power generation

owlman — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:12:57 +0100

Posted By: JSHarris The chap was quite amazed that we took every EU Directive and made it part of our law

I'd heard somthing similar, pehaps the difference between Gallic and also Latin mentality, and our own Anglo Saxon temprement. Or it may be our politicians using the EU as an excuse for enforcing regulation they couldn't fulfill in a purely UK only scenario.

Our rivers and power generation

windy lamb — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:13:37 +0100

JSHarris- Yes, I think your friend was right. That seems to be the thinking behind my friends observations!
That's why we are a nation of Bureaucrats, it's them who gold plate everything and then their mates in the next office go out and inspect the rest of us. My family farm only employs my wife and I, but sometimes I think I'm employing half the Welsh Assembly Government aswell. I weep for the children of tomorrow.

Our rivers and power generation

buckyp — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:29:28 +0100

As a final note on the website thing, our site is there if people want to use it, at the end of the day we want to be running a successful hydro scheme, not a bang up to date, available to all system operators, professional all mod cons, super fast, more functions than we know what to do with, website! For those who's systems can look at this basic website, it has all the information relevant to our project within it's very basic web pages, that is all we require for now!

Regarding the hydro scheme, we have had to have an environmental survey carried out, the consultation process to obtain an abstraction license has been pretty drawn out with different departments requiring lots of tick box answers in order to determine which type of abstraction license we need, apparently there are a number of different ones! We are working to obtain a lease agreement on the land, to obtain this we need planning consent, which means we need a lease agreement on the land and architectural drawings which are costly and even then there are no guarantees that the project will be approved!

There is lots of red tape, planning procedures and hurdles to overcome to ensure this project happens, we are now progressing very nicely and hopefully we may be installing in about 12 months time.

Website building is not our first priority within this project, we needed a basic one and that's what we've got and if anyone doesn't like it I suggest they go and find a site that meets their very high expectations and try and pick faults with that one. We are concerned with generating long term renewable energy to benefit the community not produce whizzy websites!

Our rivers and power generation

JSHarris — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:02:04 +0100

I accept your comments, buckyp, but your website isn't a basic website at all, it is a complex one that relies on those who want to see it installing proprietary software on their PCs and agreeing to the terms of service of the companies that own that software.

A simple website needs no such fancy add-ons and is viewable by all, irrespective of platform.

The bottom line is that pretty much anyone can put together a simple website using Open Source, free, tools in a couple of hours that will work for all, no fancy software or particular skill is needed and you can be pretty much guarantee that everyone will be able to see it.

Our rivers and power generation

buckyp — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:21:35 +0100

JavaScript, Flash, Lynx, Open Source!

It all sounds Chinese to me, I built this site from a free site in a couple of hours and didn't put any whizzy bits and pieces on it so I'm a bit lost now!

One of our other directors put the video clip on last week so I'm just wondering if this has caused everything to go a bit wobbly because we've never had any comments like this before. If anyone out there would be willing to help sort this out for us that would be a great help, we can't pay anything because all our funds will be going into planning and licensing for the foreseeable future so any voluntary help would be greatly appreciated and you can put a link on our links page!

Our rivers and power generation

buckyp — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:31:23 +0100

Thanks for that Damon, I'll get back to you if no one else comes forward, with a purely voluntary group like we are, we are reliant on donations and offers of help, we really do appreciate offers of help such as yours, thanks again.

Our rivers and power generation

Joiner — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:27:10 +0100

Oh, and I don't like the colour of the screws, either. Couldn't you have painted them green? And how about some nice lace curtains. Very tasteful.

Our rivers and power generation

buckyp — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 19:15:49 +0100

I think we'll have to run a competition to see what colour they will be painted! Green with lace curtains and a flower bed to the side! Food for thought!