Member postings for Rupert Armstrong Evans

Dinorwig is only part of the answer as you said, because the 'run around efficiency' is only about 55% when you consider the transmission, motor, pipe, turbine and transmission losses back to the network. It is far better to give customers a discount on their bills if they keep their electrical load very constant by installing heat-storage cookers and large hot water storage tanks.

I built the first tidal stream turbine over 20 years ago for £20,000 and made no profit, but those who jumped on the 'band-wagon' have made a fortune out of UK and EU funding. Tidal power is perfectly able to make a reasonable commercial profit, provided there aren't hundreds of bureaucrats and consultants wanting to climb on the backs of those who want to do something.

There shouldn't be any particular problem with silt and boulders on a hydro project, if the intake is correctly designed. I have worked on projects in Nepal, where the Monsoon brings everything down the river. You can't fight it, so you have to have a 'cunning plan' as they say!

Any reasonable hydro project should pay for itself in under 10 years without subsidy and last at least 50 years. The last lot of investors I talked to about a hydro plant wanted a three year payback or about 40% return on their investment, so I am not surprised that there aren't many projects being built.

Hello again,

Ian SC, Your turbine looks like a cased 'Victor' or similar. Does it have a cylinder gate or 'Francis' type gates? The former type tend to get rusted up unless they are operated frequently. Are you running on fixed load, or do you have a 'load control governor'?

Rupert

Hello,

Yes, that was my workshop in 'Lanson'. We moved back to the family mill about 30 years ago, and now the old workshop is the main 'shed' for the 'Launceston Steam Railway'. Apologies for the delay in posting a reply, but I have been trying to stop 'Hinkley 'C' Nuclear Power Station in favour of renewables and grid control systems (without success I regret).

The turbine you saw in the workshop must have been running for over 30 years by now. Not quite sure which one it was, but there may be a picture on my web site www.evans-engineering.co.uk . I have been hoping to update the site for sometime, but not enough hours in the day.

As for steam things, I had hoped to salvage the two enormous (30 inch bore) 'Cornish' type steam pumps (JE&S) from Manton Colliery a few years back, but I gather that the shaft has been filled in and that there is a B&Q on the top of the site and the pumps are 300 feet below it! Maybe an archaeological project in a few hundred years time will dig them up!

Small-scale hydro has been swamped by an enormous amount of 'red tape' that grew out of Government grants and 'Feed-in Tariffs'. Now the subsidies are almost gone and one is left with just the 'Red Tape'. Anyone out there still interested in building things?

Rupert

I built the first 'Tidal Stream Turbine' here in darkest Cornwall about 25 years ago, and this became the model for the one in Strangford Lough and many others around the world. It was featured on 'Tomorrow's World' at the time but tool years to be taken seriously. The 'Severn Tidal REEF Concept' was my later design, and addressed the environmental impacts of the old 'Severn Barrage' proposals, and the 'peaky generation curve' of conventional tidal designs.

The REEF is something of a contrast to my usual work designing and building small-scale hydro plant for use in remote parts of the world.

As I am new to this forum (noted the tidal posts) I introduce myself as the seventh generation of steam pump and hydraulic engineers (Joseph Evans & Sons Wolverhampton) who is still building water hydraulic equipment, and my brother James who builds steam locomotives (as in the 'Lyd Project' that started life in the workshop here in Cornwall.

I am very happy to discuss anything about tidal and hydro power, if people are interested.