£86m substation will improve network

A new £86 million substation is set to be built near a Perthshire town.

SSEN Transmission and its principal contractors Siemens and BAM Nuttall have revealed work on the construction on the outskirts of Alyth will start this month.

The substation will take 28 months to construct and will form a key part of SSEN Transmission’s reinforcement of the East Coast transmission network.

The facility will be built with an operational capacity of 275kV and will be ready for minimal upgrades to bring it up to 400kV operation for 2026. This increase to 400kV operation will deliver the full capacity increase required to facilitate major new renewable generation connections in the future.

To enable the substation to connect into the existing 275kV overhead line (OHL) which runs between Fetteresso, Tealing and Kincardine, three new transmission towers will also be constructed.

Ahead of breaking ground onsite SSEN Transmission has for the last six months carried out pre-construction improvement works, widening approximately two kilometres of Balendoch Road which connects with the B954 from Meigle and the demolition and reinstatement of the disused railway bridge.

Archie Munro, lead project manager, said:“It has taken a lot of hard work to get to this stage, myself and the team are excited to get started, so I am really pleased that we will soon be breaking the first ground on site.

“Substations like Alyth play an important role in the race to net zero emissions, without which we wouldn’t be able to connect much needed new renewable generation to the grid. As a team we are proud to be playing our part in delivering a network for net zero.”

Go to https://www.ssen-transmission.co.uk/ projects/alyth-275kv-substation-reactivecompensation/ for more information.