Micro-hydroelectricity takes off in the UK

Mark Cropper is in his Portobello Road office in London Poring over remote live flow data for one of the 20 or so micro-hydroelectric schemes he oversees around the country.

The motto of his company, Ellergreen Hydro, is: ‘We’re happy when it rains.’ Given that we have had one of the driest winters on record, you might expect some gloominess, but he’s surprisingly upbeat.

‘We’ve got two schemes now that have not stopped since 1 September [2011]. Probably in about a week they might go down because there’s not enough water, but they’ve been running continuously for that period.’

Ellergreen is one of a handful of companies building and consulting on micro-hydro schemes (defined as sub-1MW) in an industry that has been steadily maturing off the back of the April 2010 Feed-in Tariff scheme guaranteeing a set price for generated capacity.

‘There is at least 1GW of hydro that could be built out right now. Provided that the regulatory environment doesn’t change and provided the feed-in tariff remains where it is, this will get built,’ Cropper said.