The Glyn Rhonwy pumped storage scheme has been given Government go-ahead - the Secretary of State has announced the decision to grant development consent to the application by Snowdonia Pumped Hydro Ltd for the project.

The development consent covers the construction and operation of a 99.9MW pumped storage scheme at the Glyn Rhonwy and Chwarel Fawr quarries. Decommissioning of the two quarries will be undertaken under the provisions of the Reservoirs Act 1975.

Key elements of the scheme include:

• One head pond situated in the disused Chwarel Fawr quarry with a new dam, access shaft and spillway infrastructure to the Nant y Betws stream;
• One tailpond to be situated in the disused Glyn Rhonwy quarry with a new dam, access shaft and spillway to Llyn Padarn;
• A pumping station at Llyn Padarn;
• A power house at the Glyn Rhonwy Industrial Estate to the south of the Glyn Rhonwy quarry with ancillary buildings and equipment consisting of up to two underground turbines and pumps approximately 70 metres underground;
• A penstock connecting the reservoir in the Chwarel Fawr quarry to the power house; and
• A tail race connecting the power house to the reservoir in the Glyn Rhonwy Quarry.

The application is a ‘Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project’ under the Planning Act 2008 by virtue of being an onshore generating station with a generating capacity of greater than 50MW.

Although there is no National Policy Statement which explicitly covers pumped storage projects such as Glyn Rhonwy, the Overarching National Policy Statement for Energy considers that the storage of energy will, in general terms, play an important role in the United Kingdom`s energy mix. This was reinforced in the Call for Evidence, ‘A Smart, Flexible Energy System` issued by BEIS and OFGEM in November 2016.

 The Secretary of State considers that the project would deliver repeatable and reliable on demand energy over the potentially considerable lifetime of the project - 124 years from the date of commencing generation.