Drax Group has marked the 60th anniversary of Cruachan Power Station with a visit from The Princess Royal, underlining the continuing importance of the pumped storage hydro asset to the UK electricity system.
The site, known as the “Hollow Mountain” power station, is located near Oban in Argyll and is built inside Ben Cruachan. It was opened in 1965 by Queen Elizabeth II and remains one of the UK’s key pumped storage hydro facilities.
During the visit, The Princess Royal unveiled a plaque to mark the anniversary and met Drax employees, apprentices and former workers connected to the site. The event recognised Cruachan’s engineering history while also drawing attention to its current role in supporting energy security and system flexibility.
Cruachan station can store electricity when demand is low and release it when demand rises. This makes it useful for balancing the grid, particularly as the UK adds more intermittent renewable generation. Cruachan works by using electricity to pump water from Loch Awe to an upper reservoir on the mountain. When power is needed, the water is released back down through turbines to generate electricity quickly.
Drax also used the anniversary to highlight its plans for a new pumped storage hydro project at the site. The proposed expansion would be built next to the existing station and would increase the amount of long-duration storage available to the UK grid.
Drax Group plc (LON:DRX), trading as Drax, is a power generation business. The principal downstream enterprises are based in the UK and include Drax Power Limited, which runs the biomass fuelled Drax power station, near Selby in North Yorkshire.
