UK urged to reconsider Scottish Island links

The absence of grid connectivity to the Scottish mainland from outlying island areas rich in prospective renewable opportunities needs to be addressed directly by government, according to the UK’s former climate change minister Greg Barker.

Speaking at RenewableUK’s annual conference in Manchester, Barker said that there were no market signals to encourage the construction of new transmission links that would serve existing generation assets and also spark the construction of new capacity.

“It does need a political intervention to take the blinkers off,” Barker said, adding that the case for government intervention existed to “correct a market failure”.

Barker’s comments follow calls from the Scottish Renewables trade body in September for the government to act to enhance connectivity from the Scottish mainland to the Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles, in order to allow renewables developers to set grid connection dates that would enable them to apply for government subsidies( see EDEM 24 September 2014 ).

Delays in the development of transmission links from the Western Isles have already put the brakes on one large scale onshore wind development this year, GDF Suez’s 140MW Beinn Mhor.

The project had initially been earmarked to connect to the grid by 2016 but GDF Suez had to remove the project from a government subsidy competition when it realised the lack of an imminent transmission link would set the project’s delivery date back beyond the required criteria for funding ( see EDEM 7 February 2014 ).

And Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission (SHE Transmission), which is responsible for the development of the link, is stalling on its construction until enough renewable generators commit to projects to make the link commercially viable.

SHE Transmission is also the company behind the development of transmission cables to the Shetland and Orkney Islands.

Other projects awaiting the construction of mainland links include the 130MW Stornoway wind farm in the Western Isles, which secured government consent in 2012, and Viking Energy’s 400MW development in the Shetland Islands, which received a judicial endorsement of a government consent earlier this year ( see EDEM 10 July 2014 ). Henry Evans