C O N T E X T 1 0 9 : M A Y 2 0 0 9 23 DAVID FLEETWOOD Ben Cruachan’s hidden giant Deep within Ben Cruachan, on the shores of Loch Awe, the world’s first high-head, reversible pumped storage hydro scheme is housed in a man-made cavern. The installation of large hydroelectric plants is often controversial, usually because they involve a perceived threat to the amenity and beauty of some of the most spectacular regions in the UK. In 1965, the Queen opened a revolutionary facility in Argyll, which provided a possible solution to the problem. On her arrival at Ben Cruachan, she could have been forgiven for thinking that she was at the wrong place. In front of her the massif of Ben Cruachan reared up with only the hint of a dam hidden in the corrie high up on the flank of the mountain. There was little evidence of anything else, other than a small block of offices and a visitor centre. The 400 megawatt generating station which the Queen had arrived to inaugurate was totally hidden in a cavernous chamber under the mountain. The underground chamber, which houses the turbines, remains futuristic even today. It is reminiscent of a set from a Bond movie and was in fact used in the film ‘TheWorld is Not Enough’. The basic idea behind using flowing water to generate electricity is inherited from the water-powered industries which sparked the industrial revolution. The hydropower industry has re-used a number of its terms, such as penstock and tailrace. The rotary movement of a turbine is ideal for the production of electricity, working in exactly the same way as a bicycle dynamo. At the start of the 1880s, the first hydropower plant was installed in Britain at Cragside in Northumberland. The house was owned by William Armstrong, one of Victorian Britain’s most wealthy industrialists. He pioneered an electric lighting system for the house based on hydropower and the use of ‘Ediswan’ light bulbs. Armstrong’s work at Cragside inspired a large number of similar small-scale hydroelectric enterprises over the next few decades. The development of the industry into one that would supply commercial and domestic customers was hindered by problems of power transmission, something which was not fully resolved until the 1920s. The Ben Cruachan scheme was the brainchild of Sir Edward McColl, who died before it was completed. McColl was a high-profile designer of hydro schemes, having worked on the Falls of Clyde development at New Lanark in the 1920s. McColl’s work was characterised by its pioneering nature. The development at the Falls of Clyde was the first use of run-of-the-river technology in Scotland. McColl’s design for Cruachan was similarly pioneering. He designed the first reversible pumped-storage system in the world. Pump storage schemes reduce the need for multiple dams across a catchment by simply having two reservoirs, one above the other. During offpeak hours, water is pumped back through reversible A turbo generator under construction at Ben Cruachan Dam (Copyright The Scotsman Publications Ltd. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk)
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