Qualla: Foyers hydropower schemes

Foyers hydropower schemes: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob1960evens, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the British Aluminium Company powered up its Victorian turbines at Foyers in June 1896, it took something away from the Falls of Foyers. The water that had thundered down the gorge in front of MacBrayne's pleasure steamer passengers was now diverted through a 30-inch cast iron pipe to make aluminium. Robert Burns had once praised those falls in verse. The aluminium plant ran until 1967, then closed; the falls partly returned. But by 1974, a much larger scheme buried in the hillside above was using all of Loch Ness as a battery, pumping water 580 vertical feet up to Loch Mhòr at night and letting it fall back through 300 megawatts of reversible turbines by day.

Image: Bob1960evens | CC BY-SA 4.0

Foyers hydropower schemes: The Smelter That Reshaped a Loch

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob1960evens, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Heroult-Hall process, perfected on two continents in 1886-1887, required staggering amounts of electricity to extract aluminium from bauxite—around 24 megawatt-hours per ton produced. The British Aluminium Company, formed in 1894, bought the Lower Foyers estate of 8,000 acres...

Image: Bob1960evens | CC BY-SA 4.0

Foyers hydropower schemes: Crow-Stepped Gables on the Shore

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scotland_location_map.svg: Eric Gaba, NordNordWest derivative work: Uwe Dedering, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cameron Burnett probably designed the smelter building, erected in 1895-96. It consists of eight crow-stepped gables behind a long shed, with a corrugated iron roof, pairs of round-headed windows piercing the end walls, and a louvered saddle-back vent running along each ridge. Hi...

Image: Scotland_location_map.svg: Eric Gaba, NordNordWest derivative work: Uwe Dedering | CC BY-SA 3.0

Foyers hydropower schemes: The Pumped-Storage Giant

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob1960evens, CC BY-SA 4.0. The North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board took over the site within a year of the smelter closing, replaced the five Girard turbines with a single 5 megawatt unit, and began planning something far larger. In 1968 the Board promoted a 300 megawatt pumped-storage scheme using Loch...

Image: Bob1960evens | CC BY-SA 4.0

Foyers hydropower schemes: The Shatter Zone of the Great Glen

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob1960evens, CC BY-SA 4.0. The final cost came in at £202 million, nearly twice the original estimate. Sixty per cent of the overrun was inflation; most of the rest was geology. The scheme threads through the shatter zone of the Great Glen Fault, the tectonic suture that splits Scotland from coast to coast...

Image: Bob1960evens | CC BY-SA 4.0

Foyers hydropower schemes: Forward by Day, Backward by Night

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob1960evens, CC BY-SA 4.0. The hybrid nature of the scheme—about 25 per cent of its planned output comes from natural inflow to Loch Mhòr—makes it both a battery and a generator. Some River Fechlin water is diverted through a tunnel into the River E upstream of Loch Mhòr to boost catchment. The 18 kV gener...

Image: Bob1960evens | CC BY-SA 4.0