Lee Abbey hydroelectric scheme

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Lee Abbey lies within the beautiful valley of the River Lee on the coast of Exmoor in North Devon. The Abbey is run as a Christian holiday and conference centre and up to the 1950s used to have a micro-hydrolectric scheme in place to supply power; although over time due to the projected costs of the much needed repairs this fell into disrepair and was abandoned.  During 2007 the abbey examined the feasibility of renovating the scheme and carried out initial appraisals, with plans to increase the abstraction.

The plans involved the abstraction of water from an existing weir on the River Lee, which would then be piped by gravity to an existing impoundment on a small tributary of the river, the Caffyns tributary, where a second intake would carry the water to a turbine, housed at the bottom of the catchment by the sea. To support the scheme’s application, the Environment Agency required surveys of the aquatic invertebrate communities in the two watercourses. Sampling was undertaken at sites in the immediate vicinities of the intake on the Lee and the impoundment and intake on the Caffyns tributary, as well as at a site downstream of the outfall form the pump house. The survey recorded diverse communities, including a population of the rare water beetle Hydraena pygmaea.