We climbed up to Copper Mines Valley at Coniston on Christmas Day.
At the top of the stream we found the feed for the Coniston Hydro-electric Power Station. I found the details of the scheme on-line http://www.gilkes.com/case-studies/Coniston It's actually an old scheme from the 1930s which fell out of use and was then restored.
The water travels 700m and falls through a height of 72m to reach turbines that generate 300kW of electrical power. It says that it takes the water 25 seconds to fall that distance. If it fell vertically in a vacuum, my calculations show that it would take only 3.8 seconds. The drag in the pipe means that it won't reach its theoretical maximum speed.
