The first full year of generation at Osney Lock Hydro has come a close with a total generation of 143,365kWh of green electricity being generated. The excellent generating conditions in recent weeks have gone some way to compensate for last year’s extremely dry summer, helping us reach 80% of an ‘average year’ forecast.
Generation from hydro is expected to fluctuate year on year in response to local river conditions. This is why we used several years of river flow data when modelling our expected generation targets, and work to a range of generation, and to a long term financial model, and expect the good and bad years to average out in the long term.
After this first year of operation, we will revert to report annual generation in alignment with our financial year (April to March). Since 1st April 2016 we have generated 45,057 kWh, around a quarter of our annual target, As we move into summer we expect generation to slow down as river flow drops, then picking back up in the autumn as we head into the main generating period.