About some dams
I've recently finished Emma Wood's book "The Hydro Boys: Pioneers of Renewable Energy". It's her examination of the Scottish hydro-electric power schemes and reading it provided an interesting contrast to Jim Miller's "The Dam Builders: Power from the Glens" which I read back in 2021 and covers the same subject.
Both books do discuss the earlier schemes, like the Blackwater Reservoir which was built in 1905-9 to power the generators for the aluminium smelter at Kinlochleven, but their main focus is the work done in the early years after the end of the Second World War by the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board or NOSHEB.
Between 1945 and the early 1960s there was a huge programme of dam building and related works across the highlands of Scotland to provide hydro-electric power. New lochs were created, like Loch Glascarnoch on the road from Inverness to Ullapool, and existing lochs were made deeper, like Loch Luichart to the south of there (both being part of the same scheme).
Jim's book, which I'd recommend reading first, is the story of the "how", so it's a tale of how the schemes work and what it was like building them. It was first published in 2002 and sadly it's now only available new as an e-book but I picked up a paper copy on eBay for a few quid.
Given the time many of the workers were displaced persons, so from all over Europe, and were working for half wages. They lived in camps, and there's remains of some of those still in existence: for example the camp site at Contin used to be a workers' camp. Working conditions were hard, and people died, and I suspect many of those who worked on the scheme suffered long term health consequences, but these were different times.
Emma's book, published slightly later in 2005, concentrates largely on the people who were making the decisions and the politics behind it.
If, like me, you're currently heavily involved in the new round of energy related developments across Highland then it makes a fascinating read. In the immediate post war period the residents were there because that was where they had always lived and for them the promise of the hydro schemes was that it would give them electricity to their homes at last. Meanwhile the only real tourism was the upper classes coming to game fish or shoot deer.
As a result the main opposition came from rich landowners who saw developments as, especially, a threat to their salmon. Most of them already had electricity, via private generators, so they weren't that interested in the product of the schemes. Such a contrast to today's energy developments where many landowners are all too keen to see wind turbines and the like on their land and it's the ordinary residents who are opposed.
I'm treading on dangerous ground here as I'm chair of the South Planning Applications Committee on The Highland Council which is continually having to decide applications relating to this new wave of energy developments but if you're involved in this too, in any way, I'm recommend Emma's book in particular as I think it makes good background reading. But if you're just interested in the engineering I'd go for Jim's.
Or just read both. They make a good pairing.
