Retiring wind farms

Many thanks JessM - from what you have said, that will be why our Government are looking into installing them. Off the Point of Ayre, the tide is often turbulent with cross currents and the sea level is very deep there; no doubt it is where they plan to site them. They wouldn't be a problem for boats/yachts as the cross currents make it dangerous for sailing in that area. Fingers crossed then

Of course! Derrr...

On the news tonight.
Durham is going to be the first city in the UK to have its own hydro plant.
I have been watching the building of it for a long time but had no idea what it was. It will produce enough power, using an enormous Archimedes screw, to power all the office blocks in the area, including the new NS&I offices in the city centre. Should be working from September.
Brilliant.

What powers the Archimedes screw?

Hydro. Water. The River Wear.

So it is horizontal, with the water flowing against the screw and pushing it round to generate power ? (or maybe vertical with water flowing downwards) At first I thought that it was vertical, lifting water up to a turbine, and using as much power to do that as it generated. Got it now.

Looks like a 45 degree angle. It's impressive, anyway.
www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/20-tonne-water-power-installation-7199432

stacks of Google image pics A new twist on the old-fashioned water wheel.

That sounds very promising.

The biggest archmedes screws i ever saw were lifting smelly sewage water up and over a sea wall in Cardiff bay. They were huge. They were also right next to where the council had put the travellers' site, which i thought was shocking. Air full of sewage droplets!

Hopefully the River Wear is not a sewage dump, JessM. They are having a fish ladder there to let the fish get upriver, avoiding the hydro centre.
I think that's terrible of Cardiff Council. I hope people objected, and not just the travellers.

I doubt there was any protest durhamjen.
Rivers are pretty clean these days, thanks to the EU legislation and lots of money spent cleaning them up in respect to sewage pollution. Salmon are spawning in the headwaters of the Taff for the first time in, I think it is, 200 years.