21 May 2008 - The River Don Hydro Survey

On a nice sunny evening, four men (well, Mark, Pete, James and Lee) and a rubber duck set out to various points along the river Don. Passers-by may have thought we looked peculiar, splashing around in the water with a measuring stick before setting the little ducky free and using a stop watch to time its progress down the Don.

There was reason to this odd behaviour. Penistone FoE are investigating potential sites to generate electricity using a micro-Hydro energy plant to make use of the natural renewable resources, the same resource that used to power the early mills along the Don.

Using a tape we measured a 10m stretch of the river and then took a measure of the rivers width. A lucky volunteer (Mark) was sent into the river to measure the depth at regular intervals and the duck was a means to assess the velocity of the river. With these results we are able to calculate the rivers flow, which in turn helps to establish if any of the four sites may be suitable. This forms the very preliminary stages of the scheme and we hope to take it forward.

If you would like to know more please visit http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/case_studies/hydro_power.html?ic_number=906947&m_sourcecode=CLONLINE