Hydroelectric Power in Southern Scotland

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THE central area of Scotland will soon be largely supplied with electric power by three water power companies. Two of them, the Grampians Electricity Supply Company and the Lanarkshire Hydro-Electric Power Company, are already operating, but it will be three or four years' time before the Galloway Water Power Company will be in a position to supply. The Galloway Company will shortly begin to build five water power stations, of a total capacity of 102,000 kilowatts, extending from the neighbourhood of Loch Doon in Ayrshire to Tongland near Kirkeudbright. Four of these stations depend for their power on the falling level of the River Ken, the lower part of which is the Dee. The other station, Glerilee, gets its power from a large artificial reservoir to be formed by a concrete dam on the Black Water of Dee between Newton Stewart and New Galloway. It will store the run-off water from an area of about forty-nine square miles. The scheme provides for a dam across Loch Doori which will raise its level twenty-three feet. At present Loch Doon discharges itself by the River Doon into the Firth of Clyde. In future the main portion of its water, with the exception of the compensation water which the company must continue to supply to the River Doon, will be diverted into the River Ken. Thus it will flow into the Solway Firth. When this is done, the water in the Doon, made famous by Burns, will be very appreciably less in bulk, but its flow will be more uniform than at present. The greatest of the water power stations is at Tongland on the Dee, about 1½ miles above Kirkeudbright. A dam is to be built across the gorge, giving a fall of just over a hundred feet. The level of Loch Ken is to be raised several feet, so as to give additional storage for Tongland.