It is to seek from the Scottish Government its formal opinion on the scope of the environmental impact statement that would accompany planning applications for the schemes, currently planned to be submitted during 2011.

They would be the first pumped storage schemes to be developed in Great Britain the Dinorwig scheme in Wales in 1974. SSE has just completed the development of Great Britain's first large-scale conventional hydro electric station for 50 years at Glendoe, near Loch Ness.

It is also to submit to Ministers an application for consent to develop a 60MW pumped storage scheme at its existing Sloy hydro electric power station at Loch Lomond, allowing it to produce an additional 100GWh (gigawatt hours) of electricity in a typical year to help meet peak demand.

The proposed schemes would have an installed capacity of between 300MW and 600MW each and be able to produce in excess of 1,000GWh of electricity a year.