Scottish Hydro Electric Transmissions £1 billion investment in the north of Scotland

27th May 2016

In the last six years, Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission (SHE Transmission) has seen a £1 billion investment in the infrastructure across the north of Scotland.

The network itself is made up of more than 5,000km of high voltage overhead lines, underground and subsea cables and serves around 70% of the land mass of Scotland. The money invested in projects since 2010 has built the resilience of the supply to SHE Transmission's 750,00 customers in the area while providing the network needed to allow renewable energy generators to connect in to the grid, and it's an investment spread across five separate *projects:

Foyers-Knocknagael - a £26 million build involving the installation of twin conductors across 85 existing 40-year-old 275kV steel towers.

Beauly-Mossford - a £53 million project completing the circuit running from Beauly to the substation near Mossford and using overhead line, underground cables and works on Beauly substation, as well as a reduction in the number of towers from 188 to 197.

Beauly-Blackhillock-Kintore - a £94 million refurbishment of the 55-year-old overhead line running 157km on the transmission route from Beauly via Blackhillock to Kintore, spanning the three local authority areas of Highland, Moray and Aberdeenshire.

Kintyre-Hunterston – a £197 million pound project in partnership with SP Energy Networks that required power lines to travel overhead, underground and beneath the sea bed.

Beauly-Denny – the largest of these works at £680 million, it has enabled the connection of 80 additional wind, hydro and solar generation developments in the north of Scotland. Working again with SP Energy Networks, the build employed over 2000 workers.

Director of SHE Transmission, Dave Gardner said: "It all adds up to some sizeable figures; £1 billion of investment to build a stronger supply for communities, 3,700MW of additional renewable generation able to connect to the grid and a workforce of hundreds of highly skilled operatives.

"All of these projects, in one way or another, have given us an insight into the history of the production and transmission of electricity across the north of Scotland and that allows us to give a respectful nod to the past while keeping an eye firmly on the future, and part of that future is the Caithness-Moray High Voltage Direct Current transmission link.

"As our flagship project and its largest capital investment project to date at £1.1 billion, it will enable the connection of up to 1,200MW of additional generation capacity in the north of Scotland and the islands. It's a considerable investment and one which our predecessors who built the first towers and lines decades ago couldn’t begin to comprehend, but like them, we know we’re building the strong foundations of the future and the developments that are yet to come."