The 300kW hydro -electric “Romney Weir” project proposed near Windsor Castle has been pulled after over 5 years of work by npower renewables and the Environment Agency on the basis that “the technological challenges prove too expensive“.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Planning Committee voted unanimously in favour of granting consent for the project in the summer of last year for the scheme which would generate power equivalent to the average annual needs of around 300 households. It was proposed that renewable energy would be generated at the weir between Windsor and Eton - using two hydrodynamic screw turbines to extract energy from the flowing waters and convert it to electricity. The plan was for the installation to be connected to Windsor Castle.

The fall from the ‘upstream’ Windsor reach of the river, to the downstream reach below Romney is only four feet. High construction costs were cited as the main reason for pulling out of the scheme mainly due to “the difficulties associated with having to interface with an existing weir structure.” “Simon Holt - npower added that npower is continuing to work with the Environment Agency to “aid any opportunity” for another developer to take the scheme forward.

npower are developing new small scale hydro projects in Scotland of between 3.5 and 4.5MW.