£4.3 B UK electricity superhighway starts construction
Construction on the £4.3 billion ($5.8 billion) EGL2 project took a step forward on Thursday with a simultaneous ground-breaking ceremony in Scotland and England.
Image credit: National Grid
UK, England/Scotland: Construction work on the £4.3 billion ($5.8 billion) Eastern Green Link 2 project, a 2 GW subsea electricity link, took a step forward on Thursday with a simultaneous ground-breaking ceremony in Scotland and England. Representatives from National Grid and SSEN Transmission took the first ceremonial spadefuls of earth, marking the start of main construction, at events held at either end of the subsea link in Peterhead in Scotland and Wren Hall in Drax, near Selby in North Yorkshire.
The cable will travel 436 km under the sea, and then run underground for 68 km to a high voltage current (HVDC) converter station at Drax. It will unlock the renewable capacity of Scotland and increase the country’s capacity to deliver clean energy for roughly two million homes. Representatives of specialist HVDC cable supplier, Prysmian, and Hitachi Energy and BAM, responsible for the supply of converter stations, were also present at the ceremony.
Offshore Delivery Director for National Grid, Zac Richardson said: “EGL2 is the first of four currently proposed 2 GW projects between Scotland and England to begin construction and in total these projects, delivered in partnership by National Grid, could provide enough renewable electricity to power eight million homes.”
Akshay Kaul, Ofgem Director General for Infrastructure Group, said: “Today is a historic occasion. Not only is construction starting on EGL2, Britain’s biggest ever electricity transmission project, but we’re also standing here two years earlier than we might have been thanks to Ofgem’s fast track new process which cuts red tape to get consumers across the country connected to renewable energy more quickly.”
The main construction activities at the Wren Hall Converter Station in Drax began this month, including site establishment and vegetation clearance. Surveys will continue along the underground cable route and the project is anticipated to be operational in 2029.
Source: National Grid
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