Drax's Cruachan Power Station - Powering Up Cruachan
By Sarah Cameron, Scotland Community Manager at Drax
Housed within a cavern inside Argyll’s tallest mountain, Cruachan Power Station has been generating electricity for thousands of homes for more than half a century.
Many local families have a connection to the site. For some their parents or grandparents worked on its construction, while for others it is the memory of an exciting school trip into the heart of the Hollow Mountain.
I have been fortunate enough to work at this special place for 19 years. There’s nowhere else quite like it.
It has a long history already, but this week a new chapter began to be written by its owners Drax. We have confirmed an investment of £80 million in refurbishing and upgrading the site.
The work will make the plant more efficient and lengthen its lifespan so it will be generating electricity, and entertaining school kids, for many more years to come.
Two of Cruachan’s four generating units will be upgraded so they can produce more electricity. These units were commissioned in 1965 and contain parts, including the turbines, which are now more than 50 years old.
It is a hugely exciting project and a real vote of confidence in the future of the power station. With our electricity grid becoming more reliant on wind and solar power, plants like Cruachan which can generate power whatever the weather, are increasingly important to Britain’s energy security.
This importance means that Drax’s ambitions for the future of the site go even further than the £80 million upgrade. We want to build a brand-new underground power station adjacent to the existing site. This proposal, known as Cruachan 2, would be an investment in excess of half a billion pounds by the company.
Drax’s plans to build a new power station would support around 150 jobs in the local area during the construction and be a real boost to the Argyll economy with up to £73m gross value added.
To make it a reality, we need the UK Government to provide certainty with a new policy to de-risk such an investment. Those proposals are progressing, and we hope to have more certainty from the government this year.
This is an exciting time to be working at Cruachan, it really does feel like the power station is at the heart of the country’s energy transition.
It won’t be long until ‘Tunnel Tigers’ will be roaring under Ben Cruachan’s slopes once again.
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