POWER FROM THE RAIN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21414, 11 February 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

POWER FROM THE RAIN

MAKING USE OF LOCHS VAST ELECTRICAL ENERGY SCOTTISH .HIGHLANDS SCHEME A great engineering work is quietly taking place in the Highlands of Scotland. The. waters of some of the lochs are being carried through the mountains to produce electrical energy for the manufacture of aluminium. Work has been in progress for some years on the great Lochaber waterpower scheme, and a few weeks ago another tunnel through the mountains was completed. This tunnel, three miles long and more than fifteen feet in diameter, is to bring the waters of Loch Laggan and the Spean River into Loch Treig. The level of this loch is to be raised 40 feet by the construction of a dam 440 feet long at its northern end. In readiness for the time when this happens a mile and a-half section of the London and North-Eastern Railway has been lifted by 45 *feet. Its old position will be many feet under water when the echeme is completed. The Lochaber power system will draw on an area of 303 square miles in a mountainous district where the rainfall is heavy. Already a tunnel 15 miles long and 15 7 feet diameter has been driven through Ben Nevis to carry the waters of Loch Treig to a steel pipe-line, 3200 feet long, which runs to the power-house cf the factories at Fort William. In addition to the Loch Treig dam another is being built four and a-half miles below the western end of Loch Laggan. This will be 700 feet long and 160 feet at its highest. Lochs Treig and Laggan will thus be greatly enlarged and will be the main reservoirs from which water will be drawn to operate the power-stations. Yet. another dam is to be built to form a reservoir in the River Spey. This dam will be 900 feet long and 30 feet high, and its purpose is to hold up the flood waters of the River Spey and divert them to Loch Laggan. Besides these three big dams 14 smaller ones are being built. So the waters of the mountains are being held up instead of being allowed to run away largely to waste. Thus controlled they will make their journey through 18 miles of mountain tunnel, then through nearly a mile of steel pipes to the power-station to work generators of 130,000 horse-power—the most powerful hydro-electric station possible in England, Scotland, or Wales. / Incidentally it is said that when the scheme is completed the water that will flow continuously through the Ben Nevis tunnel would be sufficient for the domestic needs of half the population of England and Wales. The scheme, which is being carried out private enterprise, has already cost four and a<half million pounds and has provided work for thousands of hands. Permanent employment will be given to hundreds of men and women in the factories, which will be worked b/the Kydro-electrio power*