Weekly Intelligence Brief

Beauly - Denny power line to be upgraded

29 January 2010

The Beauly - Denny power line between the Beauly substation near Inverness and Denny North substation near Falkirk has got an approval from the Scottish government for upgradation.

The scheme would help to achieve the Scottish government’s target to meet 50% of the country’s electricity needs through renewable power by 2020.

Energy Minister Jim Mather told Parliament that the Beauly - Denny upgrade is the most significant grid infrastructure project in a generation. He added that approval is subject to a detailed and comprehensive range of conditions to protect the vital interests of communities, the environment, cultural heritage and the tourism sector.

The scale of the investment in developing the overhead line proposal is estimated by Ofgem to be around £330 million.

The overhead line will be 137 miles / 220 kilometres long and will replace the existing single circuit 132kV overhead transmission line with a 400kV double circuit overhead line providing more reliable capacity. The replacement line will have a quarter fewer pylons. In addition, over 86 kilometres of associated wirescape feeding in to the line can be removed or improved.

One circuit will operate at 400kV to provide a high capacity circuit between Beauly and Denny. The other circuit will operate at 275kV, and would provide a circuit onto which much of the generation in the area between Beauly and Denny could be connected.

The new 400kV line will be able to transmit 2.5 GW of electricity. There are around 50 potential projects at varying stages in the planning and consenting processes - amounting to around 4.GW of renewable generation - in the north of Scotland.