Run-of-river hydropower
Baseload power, generated beside the factory that uses it.
We build and operate small run-of-river hydro stations and sell the electricity direct to the industrial users next to them.
What we do
A small river with a steady fall is a power station that never buys fuel.
ClearStream Power develops, funds, builds and operates small hydroelectric stations on rivers that already run past industrial demand — and sells the output to that demand under long-term contract, rather than into a grid at a wholesale price.
The stations are deliberately modest: a low weir, a channel, and a machine of a few hundred kilowatts. Nothing is impounded, nothing is flooded, and the river leaves the site at the same rate it arrived. What makes the model work is not scale — it is proximity. Generation sited within a few kilometres of a continuous industrial load avoids the transmission, the losses and the tariff structure that sit between a distant power station and the meter.
Develop and own the asset
Each scheme is funded and owned through a ring-fenced project company, on land and water rights secured for the life of the station.
Sell under a long-term PPA
Energy goes to a single offtaker or a few adjacent industrial users on a long-dated power purchase agreement, at a discount to the prevailing tariff and a lower escalation rate.
Run it for twenty-five years
Remote monitoring, a local operating crew, and a drivetrain chosen for few moving parts. Civil works have a design life measured in decades.
One scheme, three units, 525 kW.
The first unit is built and running in the Matsapha industrial area of Eswatini. Two more are at completed feasibility, with equipment out to quotation.
Why this, and not something else
- Against solarHydro at a good site generates through the night and through the rainy season. A 420 kW hydro station produces roughly what 1.2 MW of solar produces, on a fraction of the land, without storage to make it firm.
- Against dieselNo fuel to buy, no fuel to haul, no exposure to the fuel price. The operating cost of a run-of-river station is labour, insurance and a spares budget.
- Against a large damNo reservoir, no resettlement, no sediment trap, no methane. A low weir and a bypass channel change the river's shape over a few hundred metres, not its regime.
- Against buying from the gridA long-dated PPA fixes the price of a large share of a factory's load and caps its escalation, which the tariff will not do.
