Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands Cruachan
Event ID 881811
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/881811
Cruachan is part of the Awe scheme designed by James Williamson & Partners for the North of Scotland Hydro- Electric Board, and is a 440MW reversible pumped
storage development. It was built from 1959–65 and was the first large pumped storage installation in Scotland.
The operating head between the reservoir on Ben Cruachan and Loch Awe is 1200 ft, the highest in the world for this kind of plant. The power station and machine-hall are entirely underground, located in a cavern 300 ft long and 120 ft high hewn out of the rock of the mountain.
The upper dam is of the massive buttress-type containing 115 900 cu. yards of concrete. It is 1037 ft long with a greatest height of 153 ft and crest 1315 ft above sea level.
Generation of electricity is timed to occur during daytime peak loads on the supply system, using water flowing from the reservoir down to Loch Awe. Pumping is
carried out mostly at night and at weekends, using surplus energy from steam generating stations elsewhere.
The turbines are rotated in a reverse direction and lift the water from Loch Awe up to the reservoir on Loch Cruachan.
The tail-race from the power station runs into Loch Awe not far from a visitor centre at the loch side with displays illustrating the scheme.
The A85 Tyndrum to Oban trunk road runs past the visitor centre. From 1967–74 the road was reconstructed and realigned on a reinforced concrete viaduct cantilevered out over, and with supporting columns in, Loch Awe. This work, of considerable technical difficulty, avoiding interference with the Callander & Oban Railway which ran along the hillside some 50 ft above, is comparatively unknown. The engineers were W. A. Fairhurst and Partners and the contractors, Balfour Beatty.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007b
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.
