Few people have heard about the Garnedd Hydro Scheme on the Weiss Woodland Estate south west of Betws-y-Coed in the foothills of Snowdonia, but its been generating renewable electricity since the early 1990's.

On the 24th March 2006 npower renewables became the proud new owners of the Garnedd Hydro Power Station having leased the site from the estate.

Garnedd Power Station houses a high capacity Turgo impulse twin jet machine driving a 594 kilowatt generator. The pipeline intake - the part of the site where water is taken from the river and diverted to the power house - is located in an upstream riverbed fed from a number of contributories including Llynau Diwaunedd.

As the new owners npower renewables plans to make significant investments into the plant to optimise performance and generation. This revolves around putting in a new low maintenance pipeline intake and screen that increases the efficiency with which water is extracted from the river and passed to the turbines allowing more green electricity to be generated.

Whilst the site will be more efficient the improvements are designed so they don't have any major impact on the environment or river flows because the site will operate in very much the same way as it has been doing since the early 1990's.

With these improvements the scheme is capable of generating enough electricity for around 350 homes each year.

Llynau Diwaunedd helps supply water to the Garnedd Hydro Scheme power house.

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