Saturday, 7 June 2014

Loch Cluanie and hydro-electric power


We stopped for lunch beside Loch Cluanie. You can see the dam in the top picture. Apparently the dam is 675m long and 40m high. It feeds the Ceannacroc power station which is 20MW but this is also fed by Loch Loyne. Given that the wind farm at Bothel close to Wigton is quoted as 10MW this hydro-electric scheme doesn't seem that much. It must surely have been more expensive than the 10 turbines at Bothel. It could be argued that it has disfigured the landscape as much. It's advantage is that the energy supply is more consistent. I do need to look further into these figures because 20MW doesn't sound very much.