Extra Sloy
Been looking through some other Loch Sloy stuff and got this wee gem from a 50′s English Electric catalogue. I love these old school illustrations and I wish I could use the friendly printed letters that said the words below.
Every inch of rainfall at Loch Sloy now yields as much power as 400 tons of coal. Every year what was once a shallow mountain loch now produces 130 million units of electricity, bringing better living to the people of Scotland. Loch Sloy is the most ambitious hydro-electric project yet completed in Great Britain. All the turbines and electrical equipment were supplied by “English Electric”
An inch of rain equals 400 tons of coal – I like that and will quote it to anyone who moans about hydro.
The rain to coal equation is a good one right enough.
Mike, maybe its a height thing for big electricity production. I know lower sited schemes have small generators that serve local communities and last year the new big one in Glen Lochy was all over the news.
There has to be a better way.
It’s a nice round figure, but the truly scary one is that a typical 500Mw coal-fired generator burns 1.4 *million* tons of coal a year. You’d need around 30 schemes the size of Sloy to replace just one.
Loch Katrine is a good local one, Glasgow’s Victorian water system piped from the Trossachs by Irish navvies.
But like all such things, the water has to be fed there from a huge area, a reservoir is never a stand alone problem.
Behind me there’s several reservoirs at around 250/300m that could feed small generating plants, you could do it with a waterwheel. I’ve seen it done.
Using less electricity is probably the way forward.
Fat chance.