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You will have noticed if you regularly walk past our turbines that they haven’t been turning for quite some time If you look at the power generation page on our website you will see that Reading Hydro hasn’t generated any electricity since 1st July.  You can also see from the river conditions data on our website that the Environment Agency river flow sensor at Reading Bridge currently reads just over 3 cubic metres per second (m3/s). This is less than 10% of the average river flow.  At this very low flow rate, the Environment Agency cannot allow Reading Hydro to use water to generate electricity, because they must prioritise providing water to the fish passes and the weir gates.

We knew that in some summers there would be periods of no electricity generation because of low river flow rates. This was taken into account in the estimate of average annual generation, and resulting income, in our business plan.  But the shortage of water this year is extreme. 2022 has, to date, been the driest year in England since 1976: the Thames region has experienced the driest July since 1911, and we are now officially in a drought.

We’ll keep you posted as conditions change.

You may have noticed if you have walked past our turbines or looked at the live data feed on our website that we have only been running one of the two turbines for half of May.  This is because we have had a bearing failure on Turbine 2 (Sophie), the one furthest away from the View Island bank.

We have an automatic condition monitoring system fitted to the turbines and, early on 13^th May, we received a Red alert alarm for the bearing that supports the top end of the Archimedes Screw.  Spaans Babcock, who made and installed the turbines, came straight to site, and told us that we needed to shut that turbine down.  The bearings should last 10-15 years so the failure was not expected.  Spaans had to order some spare parts, and then arranged to come and replace the bearing, under warranty, starting on 30^th May.  The turbine started running again on 1^st June. 

In order to replace the bearing we had to remove the water from the outlet channel of Turbine 2, which we had not done before.  This was achieved by lowering wooden planks – stoplogs – into the grooves at the end of the channel and sealing the wooden wall this made with a tarpaulin. Once this was done we were able to pump the water out of the channel.  After Spaans had completed their work we carefully removed the stoplogs, allowing water back into the channel.

Although both turbines are now running again the water level in the River Thames is now low which means that we are not always able to generate full power.  The Environment Agency requires Reading Hydro to shut down when the river levels are below an agreed ‘set level’ to make sure there is enough water for navigation.  When the upstream level gets close to the set level, power generation is reduced.

This aerial photo was taken in August 1928 and shows Caversham Weir and View Island towards the bottom of the image.

A large house can be seen on View Island along with gardens and another smaller property.

On the Reading side of the Thames, what is now Thames Lido is visible in Kings Meadow. This was built in 1902 as the Ladies Swimming Bath; the Men’s Swimming Bath (now demolished) is slightly closer to the town centre and when built in 1879 was the largest pool in the South at 79m x 24m. Reading Bridge was a relatively recent addition, having been built in 1923.

Given the shadow lengths, this October 1955 photo would have been taken in the late afternoon, facing the opposite direction to the earlier photo. Some aspects are very similar – there is still an extensive collection of railway sidings near Reading Station and the two open air pools are still visible. However, the Men’s Pool was disused by this point and the site was sold the following year for development as offices and workshops.

On View Island both structures have been demolished and there is a new footbridge between Hills Meadow and View Island, although this has now gone.

Great news! Reading Hydro’s turbines have both been running full-time since 22nd November (apart from short periods of scheduled maintenance on Saturday mornings).

You can see this for yourself on the Performance data pages of our website. The main page gives a snapshot of all the data – the current power generation of each turbine/generator, the water levels, and the turbine house environmental conditions. There are then links to more detailed pages on Power generation, Water levels, and the Environmental conditions. These have graphs that show historical data for some values. You can look at the performance over different time periods, and for one or both turbines.

It’s thanks to Reading Hydro’s fantastic Digital team that we have these pages. Live data is needed by our operations and maintenance O&M team and the Environment Agency to keep a check on how the hydro plant is working. But equally important, we want it to be available for anyone to see. 

The team collects raw data from the turbine house control system, and processes it into the website display format. There have been teething problems including checking sensor calibrations, so we aren’t displaying water flow because we’re not yet satisfied with these measurements.

The Digital team is constantly improving the data display to make it easier to read, and more accessible for people with visual impairment. Our website usage stats show that (not surprisingly!) the data pages are the most popular ones on our website, and many people view them from mobile phones. So the processing has been changed to make the data display update more quickly, and look better on mobile browsers. 

For anyone interested in the technology behind this, it is documented on our github page.

Thanks to all the Reading Hydro Digital team – Arabela, Mark, Stuart, Bapu and in particular Lynda for the website work.

Why do we need an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) in the turbine house? Don’t we have enough electricity there?

The reason is to make sure that our monitoring systems keep working, even if something happens to shut down the turbines. In fact, that’s when the monitoring is most important, so that we can see what happened, and access the controls to rectify the problem if it can be resolved remotely.

We now have this critical equipment on the UPS. We hope it’s never needed, but we are ready if it is.

We finally had all permissions and procedures in place to start generating on September 1st. But once again the weather was not on our side. It stayed stubbornly warm and dry for over three weeks, and the river flow was too low to start. At last it rained, and the Environment Agency gave us the go-ahead to generate on September 29th. Our new O&M team raced into action, and Reading Hydro came to life. 

We are currently having some teething issues with the system that we are working hard to resolve, and hope to be fully operational in a few weeks.  Whilst we sort out the issues you may see the turbines running intermittently.

Reading Hydro cbs is very pleased and proud to announce that our two reverse archimedes screw turbines by Caversham Weir are now officially operational and ready to generate clean, sustainable energy to the benefit of the reading community.

With speeches from Sophie Paul (Chair), Dr Tony Cowling (Founder), Andy Tunstall (Comms Director) & Matt Rodda MP (Reading East), our ceremony was attended by 35 people who had been identified as committing above and beyond to making our project a success. The ceremony saw our ceremonial plaque unveiled and a letter from Alok Sharma MP (Reading West & COP26 President) read out, underlining his support for renewable energy projects and reaffirming the UK’s commitment to a successful COP26 summit. The switching on of the Reading Hydro turbines for generation was accompanied by music from local band Turny Down, some of which you can catch in our video above.

The Board of Directors thanks all those who came to support our opening, as well as the wonderful coverage provided by both the BBC and ITV who did live broadcasts from our site by Caversham Weir. The Board also wishes to thank our community of members, shareholders and volunteers who are all vital to the success of this project. Plans regarding guided tours of the turbines will be shared with the community in the near future, and we look forward to welcoming you to site to see the culmination of your investment and hard work.

With Many Thanks,

The Directors,
Reading Hydro CBS Ltd

Reading Hydro CBS is very pleased to announce that our two screw turbines have been placed into their new housings on Tuesday 27th April 2021. Built by SpaansBabcock and rated 46kW total energy output, the screws were successfully delivered to our site by Caversham Weir. The challenging operation, including use of a 12-tonne crane, went off without a hitch; we thank our team, Spaans and our crane operator for their superb work in achieving this success.

The next few weeks will involve affixing the screws properly into their housings, as well as carrying out the full commissioning of the system. In the mean time, check out a selection of images from the day below; we’re also hoping to compile a video in the coming weeks to help mark this occasion. The Board passes its thanks onto you, our shareholders and community, as well as Reading, for supporting us this far. We are looking forward to commencing generation of clean, sustainable electricity in the near future.

Our particular thanks to Ian G. for the wonderful aerial image!