THE Queen officially opened a massive hydro-electric scheme in the Highlands yesterday – nearly 60 years after her mother performed a similar ceremony at Loch Lomond.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited the Glendoe hydro scheme at Fort Augustus, which cost £160million and can produce up to 100MW of electricity.
The Scottish and Southern Energy power station is the first large-scale conventional hydro-electric station built in the UK since 1957 when the Errochty station in Perth-shire, which has a capacity of 75MW, was opened.
The scheme was completed in autumn last year and produced its first electricity in December last year.
The power station will now be used on a periodic basis, with power being generated at times of peak demand.
A massive dam was constructed at the head of Glen Tarff in the Monadhliath mountains, 2,000ft above Loch Ness. Water runs down a tunnel from the reservoir into turbines in an underground power station.
While guests were transported by mini-buses up to the site of the dam, the Queen and Phillip got a bird’s-eye view of the reservoir and dam from their helicopter.
The couple then toured an exhibition about the scheme, which included film footage of the Queen’s late mother opening a hydro-electric scheme at Loch Lomond.
In 1950, the Queen Mother, who was then Queen, opened Sloy Power Station. The station, which has a capacity of 160MW, underwent a £113million refurbishment and reopened in 1999.
The royal couple also met pupils from Kilchuimen and Foyers primary schools, who presented the Queen with a posy of blue flowers, matching her outfit. Three of the young pupils recited poems they wrote about Glendoe for a competition run by the energy company.
The Queen also unveiled a plaque on a cairn, which will later be repositioned to a spot overlooking the massive reservoir.
Despite assurances from SSE chairman Lord Smith of Kelvin that lifting the stone would cause the green cloth to fall down and reveal the plaque, she had to give the material an extra flick to complete the unveiling.
Later Kilchuimen Primary pupil Daniel Sheridan, 11, who won the poetry competition, said: “Prince Phillip asked what school we were from and said that the poems were very good. I spent lots of time going over and over the poem with my mum to memorise it.”
SSE chief executive Ian Marchant said Glendoe was a “once-in-a-lifetime power station”. He added: “It has been eight years since the scheme was first talked about and four years since the board gave it approval.”
To mark the event, guests also received a hardback book containing images and anecdotes from the construction. The last page notes that a Czech worker, Ondrej Hladik, was killed in an accident at Glendoe in September last year.
By Jane Candlish, Press and Journal
Published: 30/06/2009