Rarely have I ever seen or witnessed such an inflection point in ones life.
I was on Facebook Marketplace, as one does every day to see what th latest and greatest junk I don't need is for sale. The amazing "For You" page. It somehow reads your mind, looking at all your text messages, listening to all of your conversations, to serve you things you don't need. It is one of mans greatest creations, because with a couple key strokes you can list a hydroelectric facility for sale for less than the price of a Cybertruck.
Lets be clear, I nor my father or Austin were searching for such a thing. None of us needed another project let alone a hole in the head, but here we are.
Austin, my father, and I have always dreamed of getting into the hydro world, we have a couple of friends who have facilities and we have always been jealous. Clearly whatever god there is wanted us to throw our hat in the ring.
So at first I thought this facebook post was sort of a joke so I didnt even respond to it. Austin saw my message and we coordinated that only one of us spam the poor soul who posted this. For some reason out of the near hundred responses of "is this still available" Austins message got through to the owner. We were very on top of going to see the place and get a hand shake deal, and or deposit on the place. Keep in mind we have absolutely no clue what so ever about anything related to this industry, but here we go.
Now my father and I have heard of this site many years ago, and have even read about it before, we just didnt know it yet.
The image above is the French River Land's Blog on this specific page, called Golden Pond Hydro. Without this amazing blog we would have been wondering in the dark with the project, and so as part of paying back to the community I am making this blog. I won't be going as in depth into the past specifications as that blog so read that and come back.
Austin, Dane, and I drive up to Ashland Nh, where the dam is located. This particular facility is located on a old papermill site, and was converted to a 105kw electric facility in about 1985. We have a 50' easement through what was the old paper mill property, and this is the first sight of the facility.
I, along with the others, were just mind blown, we were speachless. How could we not only find this place but be the only people that were responded to for this Facebook ad.... In my brain I was thinking, jesus I am not sure about this, and what are the others thinking. I didnt want to say anything out loud to the others in front of the owner. I knew Austin was passionate about this, as was I and my father. But is this the type of purchase where its like a boat? Will we be miserable? Can we break even and or make any money off of this thing? I had a million questions and I couldnt voice them because I didnt even know the questions I was supposed to ask.
I had so many emtotions as we walked over the crest of the dam, and overlooking the powerhouse. In my head there were many thoughts of, theres no way the others want to deal with this....
Also how can someone just own something like this? A critical part of infrastructure, and a huge liability.
I am not sure if all Hydroelectric facilities are this beautiful, but this one is very picturesque. You can see on the far side of the dam is essentally the drain plug for the five acre pond. The people who set this up in 1985 had alot of foresight. In our deed it spells out all of the water rights that we have, including raising and lowering the pond level, dredging, and draining at any time.
This picture was taken a little later in the fall, and you can see the railroad track just abutting our property overlooking the dam. There is a leaf peeper train that runs every year, and they stop on the bridge to take pictures of the dam, and have lunch.
As you step into the small maybe 14'x14' Powerhouse you are greeted by the large control panel, meters, and workbench. Back in the day this would have been where the paper mill was, but it was taken apart and the bricks were sold off over time. So the original creator of this site in 1985 made a cute little power house, about as big as you need to have tools and have some warm from the cold. At this point I am still not sure of the others thoughts, and in my mind this was still very very crazy, but possible.
Austin was the first to ask, so where does the turbine live? like where is the generator room? And the Owner peeled up a piece of plywood in the corner that revealed a set of narrow steel ancient stairs leading to the basement. Now remember that the power house is about 14'x14'. You walk down the stairs; which I think are original to the site in about 1895, and this is what you see. A huge approx. 40'x40' room. All three of us were just looking at each other in awe. It was like a tardis had taken us to another realm. At the same time we all looked at each other and gave this look, the look of, we arent leaving here without a deal.
Now comes the meat of the operation, the penstock, or to us a giant 52'' diameter pipe coming out of the wall. It seems like back in the day in order to get this site online, they sorta just blew a hole in the floor and put a turbine on the end. Seems like a solid strategy, but it gets better.
Here is the other side of the wall outside. What you see is the end of the penstock, and as you can see no turbine. The major problem that has plagued this site since its inception was the horrible awfully unreliable French Canadian turbine, and as you know the French copy no one, and no one copies the French! We spoke to many people about this site and every single one of them said the same thing "the site in in great condition and it's a good site, but the turbine is horrible". We were unaware at the time how horrible it was, but thanks to the French River Blog we knew it was a complete contraption and while they didnt reveal but we later found out is that it had an average of over 90% downtime near the end of their ownership.
Here is a nice far look of the facility from the end of Mill Pond Road, you can see the river swoops around the corner into the pond and over the dam. This is a great feature we were told because it prevents all sorts of crap from going into the trashrack or caught up in the flashboards.
Austin, Dane and I were just overwhelmed with this prospect, and walked out of the tour with a handshake agreement on the site. We didnt haggle on price, and the owner knew it would take some months to close the deal, we were speechless. I get goosebumps just thinking about this, but at the start of this old game called fable when you pressed the A button on the controller the game menu would fade, and a soft voice would say "and so our story begins". This was the start of something amazing, scary, and crazy but if you dont have those elements is it even fun?