Loch Gair Hydro-Electric Scheme
hydro-electric power scheme in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, UK
Loch Gair Hydro-Electric Scheme is a small-scale hydro-electric power station, built by the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board and commissioned in 1956. It is located near Lochgair, a hamlet to the north-east of Lochgilphead, Argyll and Bute in Scotland. It was originally designed to supply power to Lochgilphead and the surrounding communities, but is now connected to the National Grid.
History
The North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board was created by the Hydro-electric Development (Scotland) Act 1943, a measure championed by the politician Tom Johnston while he was Secretary of State for Scotland. Johnston's vision was for a public body that could build hydro-electric stations throughout the Highlands. Profits made by selling bulk electricity to the Scottish lowlands would be used to fund "the economic development and social improvement of the North of Scotland." Private consumers would be offered a supply of cheap electricity, and their connection to that supply would not reflect the actual cost of its provision in remote and sparsely populated areas.
The chairman of the new Board was to be Lord Airlie, who had initially been critical of the 1943 Act because its scope was too limited. The deputy chairman and chief executive was Edward MacColl, an engineer with wide experience of hydro-electric projects and electrical distribution networks. It soon became clear that MacColl intended to push ahead with the aspirations of the Act at breakneck speeds. He produced a list of 102 potential sites in just three months, and in June 1944, the first constructional scheme was published.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Loch Gair Hydro-Electric Scheme” as hydro-electric power scheme in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, UK. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q124394791. Authority coordinates are 56.066, -5.336. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1943 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “Loch Gair Hydro-Electric Scheme” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.