An underutilised power resource in the UK is Hydro Power. If your property has a stream, small burn or old Mill Dam running through it, then there may be scope to use its energy to produce reliable, predictable power for your home/business.

Take a look at how much water passes down your stream, and if possible, measure how long it takes to fill a 10 litre (or larger) bucket from it. You might have to create a temporary "sandbag dam" to allow you to place a pipe into the stream to carry out this measurement. Once you know this figure, calculate how many litres of water per second passes down the stream. This is your "flow rate". The amount of water in the stream will of course vary from day to day, and from season to season, so it's good to do this test at different times of the year. Armed with these rough figures, now estimate the maximum "drop height" that your stream has, from entering your land, until it leaves it (or the height of your Mill Dam). This will give you the "head" of your stream, and is measured in meters.

Take the "head", multiply it by the "flow rate", multiply the answer by 5, and you'll have a rough guide to how much power your stream could produce. If this figure is only a few hundred watts, then don't dismiss this as being too little to be useful. In reality, the average household in the UK uses only 10 to 12 units (or kWh) of power per day, so if your stream could produce 400W of power every hour of the day, it would produce 9.6 units (or kWh) of power. This would practically eradicate the average electricity bill, and so is very much worth while pursuing.

We can carry out a site survey of your property, assessing it for Hydro power generation, and design a suitable system to extract the power available from your stream/burn. We will then assist you to install it, and will commission the final system once all the work has been carried out to the required standards.

Call now, or email us to arrange a site survey. We cover South Scotland & the Southern Highlands.

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