Watt next?

The man's a powerhouse! Tudor Roberts, from Blaenau Ffestiniog, placed turbines in the River Bowydd in 1975 and has used them to generate electricity for his property ever since. The 2.5 kilowatts produced by the river also lights up five street lamps for neighbouring properties.

However, Environment Agency officials got wind of Mr Roberts’ scheme three weeks ago and told him he would have to take the turbines down.

Mr Roberts made the decision to generate power from the river after he and son David built their bungalow in the early 1970s, and he and his wife, who have been married since 1946, lived in a neighbouring house with a disabled daughter whose disability meant they couldn’t carry her up and down the stairs and needed to move to a ground-level property.

Following support from the council and the Plaid MP, Elfyn Llwyd, however, the agency has decided that he's not actually doing the river any harm and can keep his generating system.

It's interesting, for many reasons. We're all being told that electricity generation is the big bad wolf of the environment, yet making it possible for anyone to generate their own juice is met with every possible hurdle and obstacle. The Consumers' Association have for two years been conducting a test to see how easy it is to do, using off–the–shelf windmills, but are finding thzt planning permisison is as hard to get as it always was, despite the Government's assertions that they're making ti easy for folk to do.

We haven't all got a handy river, of course, but Wales does have rather a lot of streams knocking about and it seems churlish to ignore the benefits they can provide. Wind power's a little too unreliable, but tidal power is predictably effective, although harnessing it isn't quite so easy. Perhaps the ultimate solution, however, is to create giant, people–sized hamster wheels, where we could install all those anti–social individuals that delight in collecting ASBOs like smarties; then we could truly claim to have 'people–power' lighting the towns.