Electricity generated from water could become a possibility at Cwmcarn Forest.
Caerphilly County Borough Council has said it is investigating the possibility of introducing hydroelectric equipment to generate power from the Nant Carn watercourse at Cwmcarn Forest.
Initial feasibility studies indicated the site had potential for generating hydroelectricity and subsequent flow monitoring has confirmed viability.
Projections suggest 42 megawatts of electricity per annum could be generated with the majority used within park buildings and any surplus sold to the grid.
All generated electricity would attract a government feed in tariff and the project could pay for itself within ten years.
Cllr Ken James, cabinet member for regeneration, planning and sustainable development, said: “I am pleased to see that further investigations have shown it would be possible to harness the water flow at Cwmcarn Forest to generate a source of energy that could produce a new and sustainable vein of revenue.”
Further studies and funding will be needed to take the project forward.
Good idea, Wales has good hydro-electric prospects and these are currently under utilised. I can make nothing of the units used though, 42MW is an instantaneous unit. Perhaps the council mean MW/h, or Mega Watt Hours?
A watt is a unit of power, the old incandescent light bulbs had a wattage of 25 to 50 watts, a megawatt is one million watts, but as Richard, said its an instantaneuos unit,so you cant say the NantCarn can produce 42 megawatts of electricity per annum, the units are wrong. To put this output in perspective a typical coal power station has an output of 600-700 MW, which is sixteen times the power calculated for the Nant Carn site.
The terms power and energy are frequently confused. Power is the rate at which energy is generated or consumed. Power therefore has the unit watts. A unit of energy is kilowatt hour.
The differnce bewteeen power and energy is sipmply explained.
A heater rated at 1000 watts (1 kilowatt (Power)), operating for one hour uses one kilowatt hour of energy. A 60-watt light bulb consumes 0.06 kilowatt hours of energy per hour. Electrical energy is sold in kilowatt hours; cost of running equipment is the product of power in kilowatts multiplied by running time and price per kilowatt hour. The unit price of electricity may depend upon the rate of consumption and the time of day.
I can only hope the confusion is on the part of the Councils Publicity Department, as oppossed to the CEngineers who drew up the proposal.
As an afterthought, I hope they have done an archaeological assessment of the stream banks, because it is the site of a 16th Century Iron Furnace used for casting cannon by a Sussex Ironmaster.
I must apologise to the Council, the real figures for the output of the Nant Carn project is 42,500 kilowatt hours per year.enough as they say to power 12 homes based on the average household consumption of 3,300 kilowatt hours. the figure of 42megawatts was obviously a mistake.