The pylon motorways and giant power plants set to scar the Highlands... all in the name of green energy
THEY call it the ‘Beauly Buzz’, an unbearable grinding thrum that seemed to swell up from the very earth and plague their waking hours. Windows had to be kept closed even on the hottest days, dog walks and fishing trips cut short, while despairing locals living near the Inverness-shire village of Beauly would notice glasses of water rippling on their bedside tables as they struggled to find solace in sleep.
One couple took to driving their caravan down the glen in search of some evening peace, while B&B owners reported guests demanding their money back after nights disturbed by the noise.
There were worried mutterings about the impact on house prices – as the noise could be heard up to four miles away.
Much closer, in the hamlet of Kilmorack, Tony Davidson recalled how he could feel the vibrations through his pillow.
‘It was this deep rumbling sound which kept changing pitch,’ he said. ‘I’m not far from the Wester Balblair electricity substation, which we found out was producing the buzz.’
The substation was the northern terminus of the controversial Beauly-Denny line, the phalanx of monster pylons built a decade ago against huge opposition to carry electricity generated in the windy north down to the power-hungry south. A sprawling 40-acre mass of switches, circuit breakers and transformers, Wester Balblair still sticks out like an industrial scar amid the soft woodlands fringing the Beauly Firth.
Having endured years of disruption caused by construction traffic, locals were relieved when council officials slapped a noise abatement order to quell the low frequency ‘buzz’ caused by a noisy voltage regulator.
When a belated intervention by energy giant Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) brought the hum within ‘barely tolerable’ levels, locals felt they could begin to regather their scrambled senses. That relative peace has not lasted long.
This year, SSEN, which owns and operates the hardware which moves electricity around the north of Scotland, announced plans for a massive expansion in its transmission network. Once again, the tiny village of Beauly is firmly in its sights as the meeting point for three major electricity lines connecting the Western Isles, Spittal in Caithness and Peterhead in Aberdeenshire.
WHILE the company insists the hardware has to go somewhere, residents along the routes are horrified both at the prospect of years of disruption, mess and noise generated by the developments and what they regard as the wholesale industrialisation of large swathes of the Highlands, supposedly in pursuit of a clean, green energy dream.
SSEN’s ‘Pathway to 2030’ proposals involve driving new 400kW pylon ‘motorways’ through areas rich in heritage, history and natural beauty and the construction of a new generation of megasubstations, many dwarfing the facility at Wester Balblair.
The largest, a super-hub accommodating two converter stations, a switching station and two substations in farmland to the west of Peterhead, is likely to require a site estimated at a staggering 500 acres.
Another 120-acre substation has been earmarked for the tranquil barley fields of The Mearns, to the south of Aberdeen, immortalised in the works of author Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
The company is adamant the upgrade to its transmission network – including hundreds of miles of 180ft pylons taller than Nelson’s column – is ‘critical’ to meeting UK and Scottish Government ‘net zero’ climate change and energy security targets. It says the work will also support thousands of jobs and deliver billions of pounds of investment.
Opponents have vowed to fight the plans, concerned that the heritage, culture and character of their communities could disappear under a lattice of steel and concrete.
Some homeowners are already thinking of leaving, they warn, while others fear being trapped in unsellable homes.
‘Mary Queen of Scots is reputed to have named the village when she visited in 1564, calling it “beau lieu”, or beautiful place,’ said Lyndsey Ward of umbrella campaign group Communities B4 Power Companies (CB4PC), which is calling for a public inquiry.
She said: ‘Beauly will be an industrial mess if SSEN has its way. SSEN will wipe out history with three supersized lines like the Beauly-Denny all converging in a quiet crofting community at Fanellan, just three miles southwest of the existing Balblair power plant at a new 60-acre substation the size of 35 professional football pitches.
‘Most people are determined to fight this, but I know some are in despair and are thinking of leaving.’
Among them is Mr Davidson, who has spent the past 30 years developing an internationally renowned art gallery in a converted church at nearby Kilmorack, flanked by the Beauly-Denny overhead power line.
If the Fanellan site gets the green light, he says he could be surrounded by SSEN hardware.
Mr Davidson, 56, said: ‘I am bang in the middle of things here. About one pylon’s jump to the left is the Wester Balblair substation and just in front of me and to the right is where they are planning the next one at Fanellan. So if there’s a rumble there, I’ll get it in stereo.
‘When I opened the gallery, visitors would walk around in what I called the Kilmorack Bubble, an almost ecstatic state, because it was so wonderful round here. Now, we get wind farm developers and nothing but SSEN vans.’
He said selling up and moving would cause him to lose money, adding: ‘I have a client who was forced to sell up because of a wind farm and got 50 per cent of her home’s value and now she’s living in a caravan.’
Mr Davidson told how he slept in the old church to save money when he first began his ‘labour of love’.
Of the 80 artists who now exhibit in his gallery, some are ‘very reliant’ on him. ‘I also give the North a voice that it doesn’t have in the Central Belt artistically,’ he said. Everything, including international clients, is ‘under threat’. He said a power company boss had suggested at a local meeting that residents ‘were unfortunate where we lived and we were going to suffer “death by location”, which I thought was quite strong.’ SSEN said it did not recognise the use of such an emotive phrase and has declined to comment on it.
What is clear is that the Perthbased FTSE 100-listed company has unleashed a wave of anger stretching far beyond the Beauly Firth since it unveiled its plans this year.
The part of the company that deals with infrastructure, SSEN Transmission, hopes to complete nine projects by 2030 to create the extra grid capacity it says is required to support more than 12 gigawatts of new offshore wind farm generating capacity, resulting from the ScotWind licensing round.
The SSEN Transmission contracts are likely to be worth more than £9billion, with Scottish firms potentially netting up to £3.7billion of that figure supporting about 9,250 jobs, according to research carried out for SSEN Transmission. Moreover, the firm adds, the upgrades have been independently approved by the UK’s electricity system operator, the National Grid, and by the energy regulator, Ofgem.
In other words, the power lines and substations have to be built – the only question is where.
Residents harbour deep suspicions over whether the case for the miles of new pylons and massive substations has been made on the grounds of need or greed.
CB4PC’s own number-crunchers argue that the Scottish Government is seeking a minimum installed capacity of 20GW of onshore wind by 2030 and calculate that we already have 19.95GW either built or in the pipeline.
They say the 13.3GW of onshore and offshore wind power Scotland presently has installed is 4.3GW more than the 9GW Ofgem predicts Scotland will need in the winter in 2042. SSEN disputes the figures as misleading, arguing wind farms rarely operate at more than 30-40 per cent of capacity.
FURTHERMORE, this isn’t just about Scotland’s energy needs. Pathway to 2030 is unashamedly a UKwide initiative. Campaigners feel the Highlands and Islands have become a victim of geography given the region’s suitability for both onshore and offshore wind generation.
Mrs Ward has branded the consultation process a sham, adding: ‘It’s been quite clear to those of us dealing with them that they are going through the motions in conducting token consultations and have made up their minds already.’
Her group faces the added hurdle that energy policy is reserved to Westminster, but planning is devolved – prompting them to push for a public inquiry into the entire project.
She said: ‘If we do not object to this gigantic proposal in full, we will be bombarded with more and more wind farm applications and lots more infrastructure. We have no option. Nowhere in the Highlands will be safe from industrialisation. We will become an industrial hub for England.’
Further north in Ross-shire, Dan Bailey, of the Strathpeffer and Contin Better Cable Route group, shared her anger and said the company, which recently announced record annual profits of more than £2.1billion, could ‘afford to build a line that does less damage to the environment, economy and liveability of the Highlands’. He believes SSEN will only explore alternatives ‘if we keep up the pressure’.
John Mackenzie, the Earl of Cromartie, is speaking out against the Beauly-Spittal route which will