One year on: a very satisfied customer

Mark Simpson, owner of the River Dart Country Park at Ashburton in Devon decided to install an Archimedean screw to replace an old Kaplan system which had been beset by problems in the past. “The screw suits this environment so well, particularly given the vagaries of the River Dart and the way that it copes with the debris and leaves which were a problem with the old Kaplan system.”

The new system produces a maximum of 48kW, more than enough to run all the visitor facilities on site, Holme Park House (used as a conference centre and wedding venue) plus two visitor bungalows. “We have been running through the summer at pretty near full capacity (45-48kW). During the dry spell it did drop down to 35kW, purely because of the limited amount of water we could take out of the river and down the leat.”

Mark is a great advocate of the Archimedean screw as a satisfied customer: “The power output is more than I budgeted for or envisaged in the planning stages and I’m delighted at how the whole scheme has come together”. The predicted annual output for this scheme was 285,000kWh; the actual output after a full year’s running was over 300,000kWh.