Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Transmission (Re)vamp

Now that the dust is settling on the budget (passed today - still nothing constructive from Labour, and with fence splinters characteristically needing removed from the Lib Dem body politic), it's time to revisit the brouhaha over Beauly-Denny.

With a great big tip of the hat to the Caledonian Mercury, here's a map which shows the route that the new, upgraded line is anticipated to take:




In all, some 53km of 132kV overhead transmission line between Boat of Garten and Cairnmore in the Cairngorm National Park will be removed. 40km of 132kV overhead transmission line between Etteridge and Boat of Garten in the Cairngorm National Park will be removed, to be replaced by 33kV overhead lines supported by wooden poles, or underground cables. Meanwhile, a further 10km of 132kV overhead transmission line around Whitebridge and around Amulree will be replaced with underground cables.

The new 400kV overhead line between Beauly and Denny won't pass through any of Scotland’s designated National Scenic Areas, meaning that the section of the Beauly-Denny line passing through the Cairngorm National Park will be reduced from 35km to 28km, and will be much closer to the western boundary of the Park.

While mitigation details have still to be worked out, this does rather put some of the more lurid claims about the impact on the National Park into sharp perspective.

4 comments:

TartanSeer said...

'For Argyll' has an excellent piece on this very issue:

http://forargyll.com/2010/01/kenny-logan-tries-to-kick-beauly-denny-line-into-touch/

Richard Thomson said...

Cheers, TS.

Bill said...

Hi Richard

That's a very clear and welcome exposition of what is actually happening. I was always in favour of the new line, although some of my friends (one of whom has a professional interest in some of the vistas involved - for movie/television location choices) were deeply opposed, but this map does seem to undercut many of the more 'lurid' (as you put it) scare stories.

TartanSeer said...

Richard, here is the 'For Argyll'follow up article relating to renewables & the crisis brewing for nuclear power generation:

http://forargyll.com/2010/02/torness-nuclear-reactor-shutdown-may-bring-power-shortages/