ICE Highlands and Islands: Coire Glas hydro pumped storage exploratory works

Overview

Located in the Great Glen of Scotland, Coire Glas is the first large scale pumped storage hydro scheme to be developed in the UK in over 40 years. Once completed, the scheme has a potential generating capacity of up to 1,300MW and it would more than double Great Britain’s current electricity storage capacity.  

With caverns 700m below ground and over 12km of tunnels, a large proportion of the £100 million investment from SSE Renewables has been assigned to ground investigation. 

In this lecture, Andy Gregory from SSE Renewables will explain developments of the scheme to date, and describe the works executed to minimise the risk from unexpected ground conditions through collection of high-quality data to be used in Main Works design. The presentation will cover both the extensive surface ground investigation, and the exploratory tunnel and underground GI carried out in 2023/24.

Programme