Scotland to England electricity ‘superhighway’ gets green light

An electricity superhighway for transferring renewable energy between Scotland and England has been approved.

Most of the 310 miles of cabling will be laid under the North Sea and will run from Peterhead in Aberdeenshire to Bridlington on the East Yorkshire coast. A further underground section will connect inland to Drax, the vast power generator near Selby in North Yorkshire.

Once operational, the link will have a capacity of two gigawatts, meaning that it will be capable of providing power for up to two million homes.

Ofgem, the industry regulator, has given its final approval on the costs associated with the project, called Eastern Green Link 2, enabling construction work to begin. The regulator has agreed to a £3.4 billion package of funding for what has been described as the largest investment in UK network infrastructure. SSE and National Grid, which are working together to deliver what will be the longest subsea cable in Britain, expect inflation to push the full cost towards £4.3 billion.

The development is needed to help to move electricity around the grid when demand rises or on days when renewables output is lower. The cable will be bi-directional, but the expectation is that it will move electricity largely from Scotland to England.

Thousands of jobs are expected to be created during the construction phase, with the work on laying the land-based section expected to begin next year. The subsea elements are due to follow in 2028, then the first transmission the following year.

Prysmian Group, a Milan-based multinational, is to supply cabling, while Hitachi Energy, of Switzerland, and BAM, the construction group, have been picked for the converter stations at each end of the link. Aberdeenshire council recently granted planning approval for a high-voltage direct current converter station with building work to start at Boddam, near Peterhead, this year.

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Zac Richardson, the offshore delivery director for National Grid, said: “Ofgem’s funding decision is a major milestone for [the project], the single largest ever investment in a UK electricity transmission infrastructure project.”

Jonathan Brearley, Ofgem’s chief executive, said that boosting the grid capacity was expected to lead to savings of up to £1.5 billion by reducing requirements to compensate generating companies that are asked to turn off production at times when wind is high.

“Ofgem is fully committed to supporting the government to meet its aims of getting clean power by 2030,” he said. “Today’s announcement is a further step in putting the regulatory systems and processes in place to speed up network regulation to achieve its aim.”Ofgem also gave a provisional green light to a £295 million funding package for a set of upgrades to the electricity grid in the Yorkshire region.