Stockport Hydro Landmark
Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2022 11:40 am
I received a nice email this morning:
Dear Stockport Hydro Member,
Below you will see a screenshot of the control panel for your Hydro at Otterspool Weir.
It shows that we reached 2,000 Megawatt-hours (2GWh or two-million kWh) at 4.20 this afternoon, having averaged 22.7 kWh an hour over the ten years. During that time we had Lightning out of commission for fifteen months and this year suffered six months without any meaningful rainfall.
As Chairman and on behalf of the Board I would like to recognise that our achievement is down to the many volunteers to whom we owe our appreciation. In particular our “Captains” who have all gone above and beyond organising each week’s trash-screen cleaning rota. Dave, Frank, John, Mike (retired), Phil, Sue and Tim have given of their time and expertise in tackling one by one the problems that have beset us.
With each flood event the river changes its geomorphology (a new word for me!); the dredging we did in July has just about restored operating conditions, but not quite. Rain, at last, in October was more than welcome but we sense the river flow is being restrained and controlled by the reservoir systems high up in the Pennines which need to be filled up.
Yes, today has been a notable landmark.
Best wishes,
Ben