The Dinorwig Power Station is a pumped-storage hydroelectric scheme. It is located in Snowdonia national park in Gwynedd, northern Wales. The scheme can supply a maximum power of 1,728-megawatt and has a storage capacity of around 9. 1GWh.
About Dinorwig Power Station in brief
The Dinorwig Power Station is a pumped-storage hydroelectric scheme. It is located in Snowdonia national park in Gwynedd, northern Wales. The scheme can supply a maximum power of 1,728-megawatt and has a storage capacity of around 9. 1 GWh. The project – begun in 1974 and taking ten years to complete at a cost of £425 million – was the largest civil engineering contract ever awarded by the UK government at the time. The power station comprises 16 kilometres of tunnels, one million tons of concrete, 200,000 tons of cement and 4,500 tons of steel. The station is connected to the National Grid substation at Pentir by 400 kV cables that are buried for approximately 10 kilometres. Water is stored at 636 metres above sea level and is sent down through Llyn Peris to Marchlyn Mawr during off-peak times.
Although it uses more energy to pump the water down, energy is generally done when electricity is cheaper and when it is more expensive to generate. The plant is operated not only to help meet peak loads but also as a short term operating reserve. It provides a fast response to short-term rapid changes in power demand or sudden loss of power stations. In a common scenario, the end of a popular national television programme or advertising breaks in commercial television programmes results in millions of consumers switching on electric kettles in the space of a few minutes.
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This page is based on the article Dinorwig Power Station published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 09, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.