Developer Plans to Double Size of Welsh Hydropower Scheme

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--An application to double the size of a controversial pumped hydropower station in Wales has been made to the Planning Inspectorate by developer Snowdonia Pumped Hydro (SPH) Limited (Yarm, Wales).

The company wants to boost the size of the Glyn Rhonwy scheme near Llanberis, Wales to 100- megawatts (MW), double the original size of just under 50 -MW. The original project received planning permission from local authority Gwynedd Council in September 2013. It was a controversial decision, as the project lies on the edge of the Snowdonia National Park. The project will cost about $242 million to build.

The scheme will re-purpose two abandoned slate quarries at the site and is the first in a series of proposed pumped hydro schemes that SPH parent company, Quarry Battery Company (QBC) (London, England), intends to develop throughout the U.K..

"SPH wishes to double the output of the Glyn Rhonwy facility by increasing the capacity of the underground turbines and associated equipment," the company stated. "In every other respect, the revised scheme would be identical to that already granted planning permission by Gwynedd Council. The higher output would enable the Glyn Rhonwy facility to play a larger role in smoothing out the intermittency of renewables such as wind by capturing surplus electricity and releasing it when demand is high and renewables output is low."

The Glyn Rhonwy facility will have an operational life of around 125 years and support up to 30 full time local jobs.

QBC recently submitted evidence to the U.K.'s Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC), demonstrating how a new 10-gigawatt (GW) fleet of pumped hydro schemes built around the U.K. would cut $5.3 billion a year from the cost of decarbonising the grid, secure electricity supplies and cut carbon emissions by five million tonnes a year. QBC, with DECC funding, has identified suitable sites "with low planning risk" for approximately 15 -GW of new pumped hydro storage projects throughout the country.

Hydropower plays a limited role in the U.K., accounting for about 1.5% of the country's electricity demand. This comes from a mix of storage, pumped storage and run-of-river schemes. In 2011, total capacity stood at approximately 1,676- MW. According to DECC, further large-scale development potential is limited, but there is scope for exploiting small-scale hydro resources.

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