Category: The plan

How hydropower is going to our community

Additional Share Offer Now Open

Chris BrookLeave a comment
Additional Share Offer
Reading Hydro is opening an additional share offer to raise £170,000

Reading Hydro CBS is opening an additional share offer to help us raise the funds to finish our project

The Board of Directors are pleased to announce significant progress is being made on our site by Caversham Weir, Reading, UK. The main civils construction, carried out by our contractors, Land & Water, has now been successfully completed. The next stages of works include building the Turbine House, the connection cable to the grid, our fish pass and the restoration of the surrounding grounds to their normal state. We’ve been able to make it this far through the support of our shareholders, stakeholders and volunteers, to who the Board passes on its sincere thanks.

However, the project has suffered some cost overruns – this has been primarily brought on by inclement weather, poor ground conditions and the subsequent flooding. We’ve also incurred additional costs with our grid connection work and meeting our regulatory requirements. As such, the Board estimates we need to raise an additional £170,000 to be able to complete our work and start generating electricity. This is where we need your help – our Chair, Sophie, explains further in a video below.

Sophie, Reading Hydro Chair

we need your support

Reading Hydro has decided to run an additional share offer to obtain the funds needed to finish our work. We therefore invite you to support us by getting involved and buying shares in our Community Benefit Society. By doing so, you can help make green energy from the Thames a reality for Reading. Visit our dedicated Share Offer page, where you will find:

  • Further details in our Share Offer Document
  • Our Revised Business Plan
  • An application form to apply, or a link for online applications

We thank you for your continued support.

The Directors, Reading Hydro CBS

The Share offer will close by 5pm, 9TH APRIL 2021

We’ve made it! £980,000 raised in successful share offer

Chris BrookLeave a comment
Success! Thank you to all of our investors!

Reading Hydro CBS is pleased to announce that following the recent reopening of our Share Offer to new investment, we have been successful in reaching our revised target of £980,000 to build and operate twin Archimedes turbines by Caversham Weir in Reading, UK.

Successful Local-led investment

2020 has certainly been a challenging year, and it has been no different for Reading Hydro, as we reached a critical point for our project in the summer. Following on from our Share Offer Raise earlier this year in February, and after obtaining firm quotes and timescales for delivery of both our required infrastructure and equipment in the following months, the Board of Directors decided that a revised Share Offer and a reopening period was needed to ensure that the construction of twin Archimedes Screw hydro-electric turbines could go ahead by Caversham Weir.

We reopened our Revised Share Offer in August 2020 with a new target of £980,000, with current and new investors welcomed to join and build on their commitments to the project as to help us reach our revised target. We further extended the offer into early September as to allow more local investors their chance to get involved with the project, offsetting any ‘surplus’ against the £100,000 investment from our biggest institutional investor, Co-operatives UK. This extension has allowed us to ensure that 96% of our investors are people and businesses that are local to Reading and the Reading area – truly a phenomenal achievement for a project run by locals, for local benefit.

A Significant Milestone

Having closed the Share Offer following a successful raise, the Board of Directors are now placing into motion the next steps of the build and administration of the scheme. Our administrators, Sharenergy, will be contacting investors to formally issue their shares to them prior to the end of September – Reading Hydro asks that all investors keep an eye out for this communication, and that they should contact us at their earliest convenience if after September they have not received the official issuing of shares notifications.

Concurrently, the Board are also working with our Civils contractor, Land & Water, to prepare our site and start the process of building the foundations for the turbines. This work, scheduled to take place during the rest of 2020 by Caversham Weir, will be the first phase of building for the project, with the planned installation of the Spaans-Babcock Archimedes screws taking place in early 2021.

Our sincere thanks

The Board of Directors wish to thank all of our investors, members and volunteers who have committed themselves to this project to help ensure that clean energy from the River Thames becomes a reality for Reading. there is a long way to go yet, but we are confident that we are making real progress in delivering sustainable energy for the benefit of the Reading community.

With Many Thanks,

The Directors,
Reading Hydro CBS Ltd

Group of Reading Hydro members celebrating by Caversham Weir
Thank you to all our members and investors for making our share offer a success!

Breaking News!!!

Stuart WardLeave a comment
Group of Reading Hydro members celebrating by Caversham Weir

Fantastic breaking news – Reading Hydro has received a boost to our share raise, thanks to an offer of a £100k investment from Power to Change. With this we have reached our £700k target! Thank you so much to everyone who has invested.

Our share offer will stay open as stated to February 14th, but we may have to scale back applications for shares. To encourage community ownership, we will give priority to applications from Reading residents.

Are the interest rates limited?

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Caversham Weir in Winter

Once the scheme is up-and-running, we aim to offer 4% interest to investors each year (or at the rate of inflation if that is higher). The rate is not guaranteed, it will be agreed by Reading Hydro members at the AGM and depend on the income and costs during the previous year. You can invest and chose not to receive interest.

To apply for shares go, to https://hydro.readinguk.org/shares/ or email us at reading.hydro.cbs@gmail.com if you have any questions.

What other examples are there of this type of plant?

Stuart WardLeave a comment
SONY DSC

There are lots of hydro power schemes in the UK already using Archimedes screw turbines. We have learned and taken inspiration from them. There are five sites nearby on the Thames at Mapledurham, Osney, Sandford, Sonning and Windsor. Reading Hydro is really close to Reading town centre and the railway station, and by far the easiest one to visit!

To apply for shares go, to https://hydro.readinguk.org/shares/ or email us at reading.hydro.cbs@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Minimum Target Reached

Stuart WardLeave a comment

We hit an important milestone today when our application went past the minimum amount of £426 K so we are in a position when we can actually start the ordering process. Applications now stand at £435,993 which is 62.3% of the £700,000 total.

Although we still need the remaining £264,007 we still have 3 weeks until the offer closes.

If you have pre-registered but not applied please apply now to close the gap further.

Also come along to our evening meeting on Monday and lunchtime meetings on Tuesday to find out more and get further updates

How much Community Benefit will there be?

Stuart WardLeave a comment
We estimate the Community Benefit Fund to be approximately £700,000 over 40 years, which is an average of around £17,500 per year. This can be invested into other local actions to tackle climate change – which have to be both renewable, and benefit people in Reading and the Thames Valley but not necessarily located in the Thames Valley. The Board will ratify assessments of projects and propose to the shareholders which ones to support at the AGM.

To apply for shares go to our shares page, or email us at reading.hydro.cbs@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Investment progress

Stuart WardLeave a comment
Investment progress as of 16 Jan 2020.

The target line is a linear forecast based on £700,000 divided by the days between start and finish. The actual applications are the total value of the cumulative applications received to that date, it doesn’t take into account total pledges in the pre-registration phase or the actual payments received so far.

As you can see we are tracking well ahead of that target line, but there is still some way to go. So please keep up your promotions efforts, and tell your friends about the project.