By Daniele Novara
On November 13-14th the 2019 British Hydropower Association annual conference took place at the Hilton Grosvenor Hotel in Glasgow. The speaker’s line-up included more than 30 figures representing academia, industry and water/energy authorities.
Among the presenters was Daniele Novara from Trinity College Dublin, who introduced the audience to the two hydro pilot plants recently built by the Dŵr Uisce project in Ireland and Wales. Such installations are both powered by a 4 kW Pump As Turbine (PAT) which showed many advantages over conventional turbines – essentially reduced purchase cost and simplified maintenance. Besides, such devices can be effectively placed along with pre-existent pipe networks thus dramatically lowering the resources and time needed to complete the installation.
The performances of the two operating turbines will be monitored on the long period to gather additional information on their durability and efficacy when deployed on the field.