Preserving Beauty, Providing Hydropower in Scotland

雪儿 · 发表于: 2011-7-14 16:23:16

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Capturing Power in the Glens

Photograph by Toby Smith, Getty Images Reportage

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

In the rainy Scottish Highlands, home to Great Britain's highest mountains and largest inland lakes, some 80 dams span the valleys in testament to an earlier generation's vision of capturing then-elusive power from the abundant water of the glens.

(Related: See photos of Scotland)

The hydropower effort began in earnest here in the midst of World War II, when Winston Churchill's government saw expanding access to electricity as a national security imperative. In these rural valleys, only one farm in six had electricity, and the situation was worse in small agricultural holdings worked by tenant farmers; only one in 100 of these so-called "crofts" had power.

Today, of course, virtually all of Scotland has access to electricity, and the hydropower system established six decades ago provides 10 percent of the region's power. Even with windmills rising quickly in the countryside and offshore, these dams and 60 associated power stations still provide a large measure of the United Kingdom's renewable energy.

(Related: "Hydropower: Going With the Flow")

The Scottish hydro story echoes with relevance for a world that is struggling to find clean, safe sources of energy. The same battles pitting natural preservation against economic development that mark today's drive for new energy were waged in these valleys nearly 60 years ago. Scottish and Southern Energy's (SSE) Sloy Power Station dam (map) on Scotland's storied Loch Lomond, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Glasgow, illustrates well the choices that were made. The 185-foot (56-meter) water barrier, 1,170 feet (357 meters) long, seen here with a white rush of water at center as engineers test the main purge valve, is only a portion of the infrastructure built to generate power here. A system of tunnels and aqueducts diverts water into the system from areas well to the north and south.

In this altered landscape, whose beauty still endures, it may be possible to discern answers to today's energy conflicts in how Scotland harnessed the power of water.

—Marianne Lavelle, with reporting by Toby Smith

(Read about Scotland work's with National Geographic on a £10 million (approximately $16 million) competition for wave or tidal power innovation, the Saltire Prize, or watch a video here. Here is the Scottish government's website for the competition.)

Published March 21, 2011

雪儿 · 发表于: 2011-7-14 16:23:31

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Tunneling Forward for Energy

Photograph by Toby Smith, Getty Images Reportage

An engineer inspects the shale dam's internal structure and valves at Loch Breaclaich (map), near Perthshire, in a mountainous region of deep glaciated valleys with peaks more than 3,000 feet (900 meters) high. Confined spaces are treated with great respect as any injury or accident would require a tricky rescue operation; Breaclaich itself is almost 2,000 feet above sea level and is nearly 6 miles (9 kilometers) from any road.

The energy potential of the Scottish Highlands was recognized early in the history of electric power. Scotland's first public hydro supply was built here in 1890 to serve a village of 800 people—just eight years after Thomas Edison built the world's first commercial electricity station in Lower Manhattan. And Great Britain's first major hydro plant was developed just six years later near Loch Ness by British Aluminum Company, which recognized that using the enormous and constant force of water to turn turbines would drive down the tremendous energy cost of extracting aluminum—then considered a semi-precious metal—from its ore.

雪儿 · 发表于: 2011-7-14 16:23:45

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Machinery That Endures

Photograph by Toby Smith, Getty Images Reportage

The grand Tummel power station that houses this huge hydroelectric turbine speaks to the investment made over the years in this system, some portions of which have been in operation since the 1930s. The teak doors at the end of the building are the largest in Britain.

Much of the engineering equipment that makes hydroelectric power work is housed in such buildings or completely hidden underground. The manager of the hydro operations in Scottish and Southern Energy’s southern region, Roger Twigg, who is now nearing retirement after 40 years in the business, marvels at the longevity of the plants. "What other industry is producing the same product, with the same machines and same specifications that were put there in 1933?" he asks.

雪儿 · 发表于: 2011-7-14 16:24:00

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Engineering and Excavating

Photograph by Toby Smith, Getty Images Reportage

An engineer studies original diagrams at Lochay Power Station, near Perthshire. The station is fed through a pipeline and tunnel system that is more than 6 miles (9 kilometers) long.

Excavating such underground passageways for water was the most dangerous of the jobs required to build the system. Between the 1940s and the early 1960s, a workforce that averaged 4,500 workers and at its peak had more than 12,000 was required to build the infrastructure for the Scottish Highlands hydro system. During World War II, the workforce including German and Italian prisoners of war.

After the war, the crews of "Tunnel Tigers" included Germans, Poles, and Czechs drawn to the high wages and hefty bonuses. The wages were 10 times what could be earned by a Highlands estate worker at that time. But workers had to live in temporary camps near construction sites. And although there are no definitive statistics, on-the-job casualties were frequent, with 22 deaths recorded in one 1,000-worker camp in just one year.

雪儿 · 发表于: 2011-7-14 16:24:13

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Where Time Stands Still

Photograph by Toby Smith, Getty Images Reportage

Deep inside Sloy Dam, a structure called "the pendulum" measures any movement of the dam due to geological or pressure change. A high-tensile wire stretching from the top of the dam to its base etches a path in wax paper that is periodically inspected by engineers. More modern dams use lasers and ultrasound to monitor change, but the harsh conditions in this part of Scotland—cold and wet—favor old-school methods.

雪儿 · 发表于: 2011-7-14 16:24:28

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A Valley's Gentle Flow

Photograph by Toby Smith, Getty Images Reportage

In a remote corner of northeast Scotland known as Glen Strathfarrar, rare Caledonian pines line the valley and waters that feed into Loch Monar.

Altogether the capacity of SSE's hydro operations in the Scottish Highlands is about 1,100 megawatts, making it quite a small system. In contrast, one single dam in the United States—Grand Coulee on the Columbia River in Washington State, which opened in 1942 and is still the largest U.S. power station—has six times the capacity of all 80 of SSE's dams. And Scotland's hydro boosters look with envy at their near neighbors in Scandinavia: Norway’s rugged landscape enables it to derive 99 percent of its electricity from rushing water.

雪儿 · 发表于: 2011-7-14 16:24:47

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The Power of Renewable

Photograph by Toby Smith, Getty Images Reportage

An engineer transports heavy lifting gear to a small turbine connected to a lock designed to enable fish to bypass the turbines at Lochay Power Station.

Opposition from local landowners was fierce when the hydro program was getting underway. Not only did they fear damage to tourism and sport fishing, but they worried that the availability of cheap power would attract industry and destroy the region’s agrarian way of life.

Lord Airlie, the first chairman of the hydro board, tried to fend off the opponents: "Industry on a heavy scale will never come to the Highlands, because it is common sense that it is easier to bring current to industry than industry to the current," he is quoted as saying. But the criticism targeted at him personally grew so great that he resigned in 1946.

In order to ensure his Scottish hydro dream would be realized, Tom Johnston left politics and took over as board chairman.

Although it was years before the modern environmental movement, he and other hydro supporters worked to win over detractors by pointing to hydro as clean power (a story memorialized at the Scottish and Southern Energy Visitor Centre in Pitlochry, Perthshire).

雪儿 · 发表于: 2011-7-14 16:25:00

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An Upstream Passage for Salmon

Photograph by Toby Smith, Getty Images Reportage

A visitor views a traditional fish ladder, an interlocking stream of shallow cascades, that enables salmon to swim upstream past Dunalastair Dam for spawning.

As early as 1943, in establishing the program to bring hydro power to Scotland, Parliament required that developments avoid injury to fisheries and stocks of fish. (At that time, many hydro plants being built, including the Grand Coulee in the United States, had no protection for fish at all; it is blamed for decimation of several types of salmon.)

雪儿 · 发表于: 2011-7-14 16:25:13

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Footfall on a Changing Landscape

Photograph by Toby Smith, Getty Images Reportage

Fresh Scottish wildcat tracks puncture the snow on the shores of Loch Errochty. The elusive species' numbers are estimated to be as low as 400, as it is threatened not only by development and hunting, but more recently by interbreeding with domestic cats.

The remote hydroelectric lochs, often in conservation or scientific study areas, provide some of the last refuges for the species outside of captivity.

The engineers are keenly aware of the changes to the landscape from which the Scottish hydro system draws its water, says Reeves. The snowfields of the north were sometimes called "nature's batteries," a means of storing electricity until the spring thaw would slowly feed power into the hydro stations. "But what we've found recently with milder winters is we're getting less snow and more rain," says Reeves. "And while you can store rain in the lochs, there's a limit, and therefore a limit in the way the power stations are used than they have been in the past. They've seen a real evidence of change in the past 50 years."

雪儿 · 发表于: 2011-7-14 16:25:25

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Flooding and Preservation

Photograph by Toby Smith, Getty Images Reportage

In the far northwest of Scotland at Glen Strathfarrar, remote Loch Monar is held in this valley by an unusual double curvature concrete arch dam—making the facility unique in Britain. Deer and wild goat roam on the surrounding land, which is privately owned and managed.

As at many locations, the hydro board had to overcome opposition to build the dam that flooded this valley.

"It did change the shape of Scotland; you can't get away from that," says Reeves. "But it was done in a way that blended in with the environment."

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