Llanberis, famous for the Dinorwig power station and the old slate quarry. We did a tour of Electric mountain power station, visited the slate museum and walked the slate quarry.
This power station works by producing power on high demand. So when everyone turns on the kettle at an add break of coronation street this is when they start running the turbines and producing power. They have 6 turbines that can produce 1800 Megawatts for 5 hours in one day. Water from the top holding lake runs through the power station during the day at peak times and then at night when demand is slow it uses electricty to pump the water back up to the top.
There is little water in Nant Peris Lake this morning as overnight the water is pumped up to the top lake ready for generation during the day. Its kind of strange how it uses more water electricity (4units to 3units) than it produces but is more efficient than all the other power stations running at full gear.
Our Electric Mountain tour where we saw some films about the power station and how it runs then drove in a bus through the massive tunnels in the mountain.
This is one of the 6 water pipes that feeds into the generators that we saw. When the yellow level is up the water is flowing through and making power
This is where the water spins the turbine which connects above to the generator. It was so loud in here.
The national slate quarry muesuem which is where the workers used to live when open. Everything was made of slate........the entire building, the garden walls, tiled roof, tiled floor.
They used to transport all the tiles by train.
This man did a demonstation of slate splitting and shaping which actually looked easy. 70-90% of the mined slate ended up as waste which was either used to make bricks and roof tiles or more often ground into a powder and sent to Germany to be turned into makeup.
The apprentices used to have to make these fans and had comps to see who could create the thinnest slate and best designs
This is an old oven top in the workers house. The fire used to heat their iron, hot water, oven and stove top, kettle and house.
We did the quarry walk through the old quarry ruins. Most buildings were still reasonably intact.
They used to pull slate up and down then hills on carrages using big steel wire
Looking down on the power station from the middle of the slate mine
One of the big old quarry pits where we saw some people climbing. The quarry was open until 1969 when it became bankrupt and closed for good. Today there are just millions of tons of Slate piles towering into the sky on the edge of farmland.
Dolbadarn Castle on the edge of the lakes
You could still walk up the old tower.
No comments:
Post a Comment