Torrs Hydro, New Mills | Clean green electricity since 2008

2023 AGM

This year’s AGM was on Saturday 20th May 2023
The details are here AGM 2023

15 Years’ Clean, Green Energy!

We celebrated Archie’s 15th “birthday” on Saturday, September 30th down at the site, It poured it down, which seems appropriate as this is the kind of weather Archie loves! Not so great for the volunteers present, although slightly damp cake still tastes good, and spirits (of the non-alcoholic variety) remained high. We have come a long way in the last 15 years.

Green Power

Our reverse Archimedes screw turbine (known as Archie) is located at the confluence of two rivers, the Sett and the Goyt. Since he started generating in the summer of 2008, Archie has produced over 1,790 MWh of clean, green electricity that is sent directly to the nearby Co-op supermarket. Any surplus is fed into the National Grid.

Power produced in October 2023: 17,746 kWh (almost 18.8 MWh). We lost just over a week of generation this month due to the massive amount of silt, branches and other debris deposited during Storm Babet. The experience our volunteers have gained over the years in clearing the inlet after such events stood us in good stead, however, enabling us to restart Archie relatively quickly.
Power produced so far in 2023, to the end of October: 152,483 kWh (152.483 MWh)
Total power produced to the end of October 2023: 1,789.899 MWh
Carbon saved so far: over 420 metric tonnes This figure is based on the current average for the National Grid of 236 g/kWh (electricityinfo.org). When we began generating in September 2008 the National Grid had a much worse carbon footprint, so this figure is a very conservative estimate.

The autumn usually signals the start of our best generation period, but this year the rain started early and the very wet August meant that we had to defer the preventative maintenance we had intended to carry out that month. The river is likely to remain too high over the next few months for us to work safely on the bottom bearing, which would benefit from some TLC, although the sandbags will remain in place for now. We shall just have to wait and see what the weather gods have in store for us this winter.

Torrs Hydro New Mills Limited

Torrs Hydro New Mills Limited is a Community Benefit Society incorporated in 2007. We are collectively and democratically owned by its members, and it is thanks to our members’ investment in withdrawable, community shares (i.e. very distinct from the transferable shares of a private or public company), as well as some grant funding, that the capital was raised to build the plant.
Back in 2007 we were almost unique in raising community share capital.
Learn more about the society, including the Annual Reports that describe important events in each year and each year’s Financial Report.

Community Power

Torrs Hydro is an example of the power of communities to take action and begin to address the challenges that climate change presents to us all. We are a community owned and community funded organisation.

Volunteers

Torrs Hydro is run entirely by volunteers. Amongst them are engineers, health and safety specialists, teachers, community workers, computer whizz kids etc, etc, basically just ordinary folk with a passion for green technology. Do you have time to spare to help Archie?

The daily checks on the site
Work parties to unblock and clean up Archie
Show organised groups around the site (mostly Monday to Friday)
The administration of our Community Benefit Society