‘I still think that making electricity using water is the cleanest and best way’, Erwyd says to me. ‘I should say a good spot is to put some turbines in the gorge there and what wildlife are you disturbing? Well, two hares, two foxes… and they could run the cables down to what’s already there’…
I have been into the power station and seen its workings. Breathtakingly simple in essence, water is channelled from high up in the Plynlimon range. Plynlimon, at seven hundred and fifty two metres, the highest peak in the Cambrian Mountains. On one of its flanks rises the Severn, on another, the Wye, and their lesser know little sister who makes her way the quickest to the sea, the Rheidol rises at Llyn Llygad Rheidol and trickles her way down towards Ponterwyd, the village where Erwyd was born and from whence he was given his name. Before the water descends to the village it is blocked. Dammed at her source by the water board. It then cascades down steps, part of a machine before she even has a chance to behave as a mountain stream. She carves her way through the mountainside before collecting in a reservoir, blockade again by the largest dam in England and Wales, the Nant y Moch dam. From there it is channelled through pipes to a lower dam, Dinas, where some electricity is generated, and again from there, through the ground ultimately to arrive at the Cwm Rheidol power station. Herein the pipes narrow to build pressure and the water rushes past a set of turbines whose blades adjust their angles to achieve the maximum contact from the water. The turbines are attached to a shaft connected to a magnet and a copper coil. From there an alternator amplifies the charge and it is send to the grid., while the water rushes out into the reservoir. From here stalled by the Felin Newydd dam the water finally falls down a man made weir and from there, finally she flows free down to the sea.
When the dam was built, during the 1950s, well before climate change was mainstream. ‘It was built more as an efficient means of generating electricity.’ Marc Welsh, a Human Geographer tells me. All the niceties of decorating the weir and the lovely stonework around the area, the fish ladder, it’s all a way of selling the project to the public. A way of overcoming the opposition to the reconstructing of the valley.
Hydro electricity is a convoluted topic. One the one hand, electricity generated largely by gravity. On the other hand an engineering project which totally restructures the landscape. Prevents fish from reaching their breeding grounds and causes the flow of the river to behave in very unnatural ways. The constant flooding and draining washes the animal life of the river onto the floodplains from where they cannot escape when the river swiftly drains. I saw a number of Salmon roe caught up in the grass at Lovesgrove.
In places such as Iceland it causes the demise of waterfalls. To many throughout central Europe they are unwelcome evidence of a system of management run from far away. Neo colonial companies from wealthy nations building beyond the regulations they would be subject to in their own borders. Companies with no recognition of the land and history of the place they affect so dramatically.
The Hydro electric scheme in Cwm Rheidol is the reason why when you buy a local OS map it is titled ‘Aberystwyth and Cwm Rheidol’. The visitors to the site in the first 20 or so years were numerous, and kept a team of tour guides employed. When it was first built it was run by the UK general electricity board. Now, since privatisation it has been run by two German companies, and currently by the Norwegian state. They generate electricity not by the general demand for electricity, but by the share price. When the price is right, the river level goes up, and the Norwegian company Stakraft sell the electricity generated to the UK National Grid.
The process is run as a ‘black start’ which means that it can run with no electricity. The water runs down pipes in the heart of the mountain, and turns a turbine connected to a copper coil which is connected to a transformer. That’s the beautiful simplicity of the machine. The issues surrounding the machine however are somewhat more complicated.
brian swaddling 