Sustainable Development Fund 961.44 Kb - the Dorset AONB

Productive Landscapes…water
Water power at Upwey Mill
When Sue & Richard Willett moved to
Upwey Mill they were entranced by the
potential of this Grade 2* listed building
to be restored back in to a working mill.
But it wasn’t until the late 1990s when
concern about climate change focussed
their thoughts on the potential of the
Mill to generate electricity. As Sue said
‘all that water washing through the Mill
was just going to waste’.
Literally with their bare hands, they have
created a new race and installed a turbine
which will generate up to 15kW of
electricity an hour to the National Grid.
When asked what support they had with
the project in addition to SDF, Richard
explained ‘a Clear Skies grant paid for
the technical back up we needed in huge
quantities, but we got a lot of moral
support from other small scale microhydro
schemes such as Gants Mill in
Somerset and Town Mill in Lyme Regis.’
Moral support would have been needed
when creating the fall to power the
turbine. ‘The Big Hole was a bit of a low
point for us – we had to dig down deep
then line the hole with 40 tonnes of
concrete. We did everything ourselves,
apart from mix the concrete!’
The existing Mill wheel couldn’t be used
to make electricity as it wasn’t designed
to be in constant motion, so they
commissioned a new turbine from a
small scale producer in Cornwall and
set to work creating a race parallel to
the existing one.
Richard and Sue have flicked the switch
and are now proud owners of a working
turbine and are keen to share their
experiences with others embarking on
micro-hydro projects.
Magdalen Project
A new reedbed filter system has been created at the
Magdalen Project education centre near Chard. The
system will filter phosphates and detergents from
the waste water so that is clean enough, with
Environment Agency consent, to go straight into
local stream or be reused for showering.