Site Records

St. Fillans Power Station

OS Grid Ref: NN 69045 2460
Date opened: 1957
Date closed : Operational

St. Fillans is an interesting and rather pretty underground power station on the shores of Loch Earn, in Perthshire. Completed in 1957, it's a high head (830ft) station with the relatively small installed capacity of 21MW, in a single Francis machine. It's part of a small cascade development in this section of the Breadalbane scheme; the main storage reservoir at Loch Lednock receives the outflow from the small, high-level Breaclaich development, and the outflow from St. Fillans contributes to the water used at Dalchonzie, a couple of miles downstream.

The station was completely refurbished in 2002; a new runner was installed, increasing efficiency and dropping capacity to 17MW - but at a higher load factor of course. This made the station eligible for the ROC renewable energy subsidy program.

The map below shows some of the main areas of interest. The portal to the power station access tunnel is located in the village of St. Fillans, on a public road, just a few yards off the main A85 trunk road from Crieff to Lochearnhead - the tailrace passes right under the A85. A little distance past the access tunnel, the road does a sharp turn to the right, over a bridge over the old railway - and is gated. Beyond this point it's a private road which winds a long way up the hill, through heavy forest, eventually emerging onto the open hillside and leading to the construction adit and surge shaft.

There are 60 images of St. Fillans in the archives, and they can all be accessed via the map at the bottom of this page, which is a clickable imagemap.

Recently refurbished, the station is in beautiful condition - the brightly-lit interior and exposed rock walls make it an attractive environment:

Lednock dam is a substantial structure:

This map shows the whole scheme. It's a clickable imagemap; click on any of the pink-highlighted areas to bring up the relevant webpage:

Words and images © 2005 Michael J. Ross