Bringing communities together

With construction due to start in 2026, we brought members of the local community together with local business and suppliers to find out more about our ambitious plans to expand the power station.

Expanding Cruachan is such an exciting project; it will be the UK’s first pumped storage hydro scheme in 40 years, creating jobs and skills in the local area, and across Scotland and the UK.

Along with locals from Argyll and Bute, I was delighted to see people hailing from other parts of Scotland and England. As well as suppliers, I met people from local community councils, hotel owners, charities and individuals from the education sector, all enthusiastic about the project.

It’s not just about engaging with the supply chain and local businesses. It’s also imperative to bring the younger generation into these discussions. The young people of today will become tomorrow’s engineers, and those living in Argyll and beyond could even become Cruachan’s future tunnel tigers.

At Drax, we are passionate about inspiring the next generation of engineers. Each year we welcome hundreds of school children from in and around Argyll and Bute for free educational tours at Cruachan Visitor Centre where we hope to inspire them to take up STEM focused careers.

Face to face learning is so valuable and this year we want to turn hundreds of school visitors into thousands, giving more young people than ever before the chance to visit the power station. To make that happen we have launched a new fund to help more schools travel to our UK sites, including Cruachan Power Station and Tongland Power Station in Scotland, and Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire.

We’ve allocated a total £30,000 for educational STEM visits to ensure that pupils, from all backgrounds, can visit our sites. We hope that seeing the size and scale of iconic sites, like Cruachan, and learning how they operate can inspire children and support the next generation of engineers. It’s great to see schools starting to use the fund, such as Rockfield Primary School, and earlier this month we welcomed Iona Primary School who took two ferries and two bus journeys each way to get to Cruachan! I hope to welcome more soon!

Schools can apply for the fund here and should contact VisitCruachan@drax.com to book a free education tour.

Find out more about the Cruachan Expansion Project and scroll down to watch our video about what Cruachan means to the community.