David Ross
Highland Correspondent
ELECTRICITY is flowing through the first 30 miles of a highly controversial
transmission line for the first time, three years after it was approved and
after almost a decade of bitter debate.
ENERGY: A workman at Beauly power station, where the line was powered up.
Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission, a subsidiary of SSE, yesterday
marked the “energisation” of the north section of the 137-mile Beauly/Denny
power line, between Beauly and Fort Augustus.
Some 136 towers are now carrying the line the first 31 miles, leaving SSE
with another 400 to erect over the next year and a half.
It is the first time that a power line with an operating voltage of 400kV
has been used in the North of Scotland.
The company has 86 more miles of towers to complete to its finishing point
near Dunblane, after which the remaining miles are the responsibility of
Scottish Power.
The line has been designed to carry south the large volume of electricity
expected from wind, wave and tidal energy projects being built or planned
in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
Conservationists warn there are still battles ahead over the £600 million
development and say the “damage Beauly/Denny is doing to the landscape is
far worse than people imagined”.
However, SSE insists the project in the past two years has been closely
monitored and has shown its worth. It said it has generated around £86
million in Gross Value Added (GVA), an economic measure of the value of
goods and services, to the Scots economy and created around 1500 jobs
directly and indirectly.
David Gardner, SSE’s director of transmission, said the economic spin-off
had been enormous.
He added: “The hotels are full and you can’t get a pie in a bakers in
Beauly by the afternoon.”
He admitted some jobs were taken by people from abroad, but added they were
being replaced by local labour as they left.
He saw this “skilling” of the community as one of the most important
legacies that would become obvious in SSE’s forthcoming multibillion-pound
programme of grid upgrades for the north of Scotland.
At the new giant substation near Beauly the ground work has already been
done to accommodate the power coming in from the Western Isles.
However, a final decision on laying a subsea cable to carry it will not be
made until the end of the year when the level of subsidy is agreed by
government.
The first impact of the new line will be the dismantling of the remaining
pylons down to Dunblane to allow the new line to be built. The new line
will allow transmission to be diverted round by the east coast route as
this work is done.
SSE stress this is a replacement line and that while 600 new towers are
being built there will be an overall decrease of more than 200 as existing
pylons come down.
However, some are almost twice as high, up to 213ft and almost the height
of the Wallace Monument at Stirling, which has outraged sections of local
and environmental opinion.
Dave Morris, director of Ramblers Scotland, said he was convinced the
project had been dictated by the Westminster Government from the start.
He said: “The Department of Energy was determined to impose the project on
Scotland regardless of the views of Scottish people. The Scottish
Government had no way out after the recommendation of the public inquiry
reporter.
“The damage it is doing to the landscape is far worse than people imagined.
There will be a massive uproar when the power line gets to Stirling with
its massive towers.”
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