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About Cruachan
Cruachan is a pumped storage hydro station on Loch Awe in Argyll and Bute. It was commissioned in 1965. It pumps water uphill to its top reservoir when power is plentiful, and lets it back down through turbines when the grid needs it.
Its 453 MW of registered generating capacity is spread across 4 balancing mechanism units. Every half hour each unit tells the grid how much it will generate (its physical notification): that is the live figure above, and GridMonkey records it every half hour for the chart.
Pumped storage stations are giant water batteries: they pump water uphill when power is plentiful and generate when the grid needs it, within a minute or two.
| Type | Pumped storage hydro |
|---|---|
| Registered capacity | 453 MW |
| Commissioned | 1965 (DUKES 5.11) |
| Area | Argyll and Bute |
| Location | On Loch Awe in Argyll and Bute 56.394° N, 5.114° W |
| Owner or operator | Drax |
| Elexon lead party | Drax Pumped Storage Limited |
| BM units | T_CRUA-1 123 MW, T_CRUA-2 125 MW, T_CRUA-3 101 MW, T_CRUA-4 104 MW |
| Size | 2nd largest of the 4 pumped storage stations on GridMonkey's list |
Other pumped storage stations
- Dinorwig 1,920 MW, Gwynedd
- Ffestiniog 365 MW, Gwynedd
- Foyers 320 MW, Highland
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Contains BMRS data © Elexon Limited copyright and database right 2026 (licence). Station names, areas and owners or operators come from GridMonkey's own table, matched to the units in Elexon's register; a station's output here is its physical notification, not metered generation. Year commissioned: Power stations in the United Kingdom (DUKES 5.11) (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, May 2026). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Map position: © OpenStreetMap contributors.