Reading Hydro was set up to provide local renewable energy, because this cuts climate heating, cuts air pollution, and cuts the control of big energy businesses.

But reducing the use of energy matters too. It brings these same benefits, and in addition cuts costs for the energy-user.

That’s why we’re delighted to see a new book published on ‘Draughtproofing and insulation’ by Tony Cowling, Founder director of Reading Hydro.

Draughtproofing is usually the most cost-effective way to reduce energy use in homes. But it’s often overlooked, even though it can be simple and cheap. Tony has championed this for many years through the Draughtbusters project which offers practical help to people struggling to pay their heating bills because their homes are cold and draughty. It’s great that this practical experience is now in print for everyone to use.

At 8:01 this morning, Reading Hydro had generated 500 megawatt hours (MWh) of hydro electricity! That’s enough to:

• Drive 2 million miles in an electric car, taking you 80 times round the world (or if you’re more adventurous, 4 times to the moon and back!)¹ or
• Cook 77,000 roast dinners for a family (or about 140,000 if you have a vegetarian roast)²  or
• Run all Reading’s streetlights for 57 winter nights.³

This renewable electricity has helped tackle climate heating. By cutting the need for gas-fired power generation, it has prevented about 200 tonnes of CO₂ from going into the atmosphere.⁴

Many thanks to all the Reading Hydro investors and volunteers who have helped us reach this milestone, and to Thames Lido the main customer for our electricity.

_{(nb: one of our turbines may not be operating when you read this, because the river level upstream is close to where we must stop taking water. More rain needed!)}

The sluice gate problem was sorted on August 8th. Our O&M team tracked it down to a tiny check-valve that was leaking. 

Generation returned to nearly normal levels, but then gradually declined. On August 12^th our clearance team found the reason for this second problem: Canadian pondweed had collected on the trash screens, reducing the water flow to the turbines. Once the pondweed had been removed (see photo) the power returned to its normal level and has remained there. 

A big thank-you to everyone involved in sorting these problems.

But if somebody dumped all this Canadian pondweed in the river, PLEASE DON’T DO THIS AGAIN. Not only does it mess up our generation, it reduces river biodiversity by competing with native species for nutrients.

You may have noticed that turbine 1 (Tony) has generated only very briefly over the past two weeks. A contractor has established that we have an internal leak in the hydraulic system that controls the sluice gate, and is looking into what needs to be done. It’s enormously annoying, since we have plenty of head and flow for generation (which was not the case this time last year!). But it’s good that the automated control system cut in as soon as the problem occurred, so that our O&M team were immediately on the case.

Take a walking tour of the Reading Hydro site, using the map below and our new information boards!

Board 1 gives a quick overview if you have only a few minutes to spare. Have a look at boards 5 and 3 to find out how the hydro plant works and how renewable energy helps tackle climate change. If you’re interested in nature then boards 2, 4 and 6 explain how we’ve helped fish, wildlife and plants.

We’re very grateful to the University of Reading for the design and production of the boards.

Seasoned weather watchers cannot have failed to notice the recent heavy rain over the last few weeks.  River watchers will have also noticed the River Thames rushing under Reading Bridge towards Caversham Weir and onwards to Sonning and ultimately London and out to sea,   As you can see from the graph below the river flow has increased significantly since 18th December.

So how has this affected power generation at Reading Hydro?  Surely more water or faster moving water is a good thing to generate more power?  Well it’s not quite as simple as that.  As the rains fell across the Thames catchment the flow in the headwaters started to rise as the ground became saturated and the excess drained into the river and its tributaries.  Up and down the river lock keepers started opening their weirs to allow the water to drain through more easily and reduce the risk of localised flooding.

As a result the ‘head’ of water at Reading Hydro (difference in height between the river level upstream and downstream) started to reduce..  You can see this quite clearly in the graph above.  Our turbines turn due to the weight of water falling through the two screws from the upstream to the downstream.  When the head reduces the weight of water has less height to fall and consequently the power reduces.  Below 1m head the power loss decreases rapidly and even a few centimetres loss can see a drop of several kWs of power.

As you can see in the graph below the generation has declined greatly since the 20th December.   During this time our amazing Clearance team worked nearly every day to keep the screens clear and the water flowing through our turbines.  Of course the heavy rain washed a lot of debris down the river, some of which ended up on our screens particularly on the 21 December and over the Christmas and New Year breaks.  You can see the difference clearing the screens makes as the power generation jumps up, but then gradually declines as more debris builds up.

Sadly in the early hours of Sunday morning the increasing river flow and high downstream level reduced our head to below 0.5m at which point Turbine 2 shutdown while Turbine 1 was only generating 2kW.  The decision was taken to shutdown the system until levels improve and the all-important head rises to a sustained level.  With the weather forecast set to become drier for the next few days we are crossing our fingers that the river levels will change in our favour.

As part of efforts to raise climate change awareness as the intergovernmental COP27 meeting starts in Egypt this week, a leading environmental charity has recognised Reading Hydro as an ‘outstanding example’ of how community action can help combat the challenges of the climate crisis. Carbon Copy, the organisation behind the Running Out of Time Relay linking COP host cities Glasgow and Sharm El-Sheikh in the world’s longest continuous relay, identified 27 local projects which ‘formed the backbone’ of the relay route to celebrate and highlight how community action can make a real difference to global challenges like carbon emissions, including Reading Hydro via its Turbine House on Caversham Weir, Reading, UK

As an organisation, Reading Hydro is proud to have been part of this historic endeavor linking two crucial global summits on tackling climate change, as well having the collective efforts of our volunteers and investors being recognised in such an incredible way. We hope our local project can be an inspiration to others (and those at COP27) in how to turn good ideas and warm words into a positive and clean energy reality.

The full press release is here

Great news – today (23rd October) the Environment Agency gave us permission to generate again, and both turbines were re-started just after noon!
The river flow at Thames Bridge had continued to run at about 5 cumecs (cubic meters per second) overnight, but surged above 10 cumecs by noon because of the heavy rain.
River conditions are still not stable, and we may have to shut down one or both turbines at short notice. But it’s so good to see them turning again.

We’re still working hard behind the scenes, maintaining the hydro equipment, developing our education programme, giving presentations to various groups, improving our internal processes. And we’d still welcome more volunteers – do look on our volunteers page for the roles we’d like to fill.