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Diciadain, 27/Apr/2011

Inver Hydro Project on Jura

Jura Excursions written in stencil

One of the great aspects of the Islay walking week for me is that during the week you can often learn about things you wouldn't necessarily or easily do otherwise, be they on Islay or the neighbouring islands like Jura. Most people will have heard of the Sound of Islay tidal energy project by the Islay Energy Trust, but how many have heard of the hydro electric scheme currently under development on Jura?

Picture of walkers on a wide track/road up a hill

I must admit I hadn't until it came up in the programme of the walking week, so I was quite intrigued what we were going to see. We met with Donald Ewan Darroch from Inver Estate who gave us a quick introduction to the scheme before leaving for the walk which would take us to the various locations for the project. The existing track up to Lochan Gleann Astaile has been upgraded and strengthend and we used it for large parts of the walk to the loch.

The future turbine house is close to the lodge, but as there isn't much to see yet I didn't take a picture. Instead a panoramic view of the area where the dam is currently being built:

Panoramic view of the area where the dam for the Inver Hydro project is being built

I should have taken notes, but from memory what you can see here is peat having been removed where the dam is being built to increase the level of the loch by 3 metres. The peat will later be ‘put back’ to keep the visual and general environmental impact to a minimum. You can read about this and see simulations in this landscape and visual assessment (LVA) (click on the numbers for different pictures).

Picture of a hydro electric scheme under construction, seen from above

The project is designed to deliver 1MW of power and should be sufficient to supply all houses on Jura with power (with any surplus going into the National Grid). It is planned to go live on 21/Dec/2011 and having seen the progress so far this sounds entirely plausible.

Certainly a very interesting project to follow, if you're on Facebook you can do just that on the Inver Hydro Project Facebook page I've discovered when preparing for this entry.

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