We walked up to Red Tarn to get to the snow. We passed the hydro-electric scheme at the old mine above Glenridding. The mine used a lot of water power in its day so this is fitting. http://www.british-hydro.org/installations/g/glenridding_hydro.html This source says that it is a 500 kW scheme that has been going for over 20 years. Oddly I don't remember noticing it before. It powers over 300 homes. I can't find details of exactly where the turbines are but it looks to me as though the concrete weir acts to create a deep pool with a constant head. This then feeds the blue pipe shown. I imagine that this takes the water downhill to a generator hall below. In the Coniston scheme about which I blogged six weeks ago, the generators were half a mile below the weir. This scheme is small and does not seem to affect the environment around - although that has been badly scarred by lead mining.
