On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:43:58 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

IF you have the right geography, the second condition can be met by
hydro power. There will always be arguments about the third, drastically
modifying the natural landscape to create artificial dams.

There are quite a number of dams already existant that are letting
down water all the time but there is no turbine in that water flow.
Not a great deal of energy at each but it's cheap and easy to
maintain 24/7 source of energy.

I doubt many vistors walking up to the open area of Nenthead Mines
realise that the large single garage is a 400kW hydro plant.


http://www.r-e-a.net/installations/n...ydro-power-ltd

Which led me to:

http://www.r-e-a.net/installations/sites_map

134 "Micro" hydro stations
172 20MW hydro stations
17 "large" hydro stations

Without digging for the rest of the morning (the float over on the
map doesn't give capacity of each station) it looks like the
installed UK hydro capacity is 4 to 5GW.

--
Cheers
Dave.