Earlier quoted context omitted.
> TBH, I'm confused about what you were trying to say. Amount of hydro power capacity per capita in Scotland is much higher than say in Wales. > pretty much every country has some geography conducive to hydro This is simply not true. Availability of hydro in Switzerland is much better than for example in Lithuania.
> Amount of hydro power capacity per capita in Scotland is much higher in Scotland than say in Wales. Is it? Because most of Wales is mountainous. And nearly all of its inhabitants don't live in the mountains. Still confused about why the population distribution is important, especially as Wales and Scotland are part of the UK electrical grid, so per-capita is ultimately meaningless unless both declare independence a…
It's hard to me to say right now mountainousness of these two countries compare (but looking at the map, looks like Scotland has more and higher mountains https://maps-for-free.com/).
But Wales population density is three times as low as in Wales.
So even if mountain availability would be the same (which I claim it is not), then hydro power capacity is three times lower in Wales.
> Still confused about why the population distribution is important
Distribution is not important, density is.
> per-capita is ultimately meaningless unless both declare independence and sever that grid connection
If it was meaningless, we would not discuss the BBC article in the first place.
> it'd be damn hard to find one that has geography that prevents any hydro capacity
Well, technically one can build hydro power plant virtually everywhere where there are rivers, but in many places (with only few mountains) building hydro power plants is prohibitively expensive and leads to too much land wasted for water storage.