Green light for Scottish power line project

The Scottish Government has approved the controversial Beauly - Denny power line upgrade project, the country’s most significant electricity grid infrastructure proposal for a generation.

The upgrade will boost grid capacity along the line and unlock Scotland’s onshore and offshore renewables potential.

The scheme, proposed by ScottishPower and Scottish and Southern Energy, will involve the dismantling of the existing transmission line and its replacement with a quarter fewer, but taller, pylons. In addition, more than 86 kilometres of associated wirescape feeding in to the line will be removed or improved.

As part of the consent the Government has required further measures to mitigate the visual impact of the line in three separate places: the Stirling area as well as near Plean and Crieff.

Approval includes extensive conditions but the administration has decided that calls to bury parts of the scheme underground or relocate it offshore would have been impracticable or uneconomic.

The scheme was formally proposed in 2005 and was the subject of the country’s longest-ever public inquiry. This lasted 11 months in 2007.

The project was opposed by all five planning authorities along the route: Cairngorms National Park Authority, Falkirk Council, the Highland Council, Perth & Kinross Council and Stirling Council.

Scottish ministers took a year to determine the £330m scheme following receipt of the recommendations from the technical assessor and Reporters involved with the public hearings.

The new overhead line will be 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.

Energy minister Jim Mather told MSPs: “The Reporters recognized the pressing need to reinforce the electricity grid and found a compelling justification for the Beauly - Denny upgrade. There are very strong arguments for a whole line solution and I have therefore granted consent to upgrade this power line which will be key to unlocking Scotland’s renewables potential.

“In reaching my decision, I have balanced the macro-economic need and benefits of the upgrade of the existing line and the visual and landscape impact at locations along the whole route.”

Read the Scottish Government press release.

 

Roger Milne

7 January 2010