A guest blog by Joan Duncan
Scotland is being exploited! We must all work together to stop the annihilation of Scotland's countryside, environment, wildlife, rural economy, tourism & health with all that means. We will not be collateral damage for profit! We do not need the amount of energy that SSEN & many the other foreign companies intend to extract. There are no discernible benefits to Scotland as a country & we cannot sit on our hands watching whilst doing nothing but complain. There are many Facebook groups across the country but it’s past time for us to come together & campaign professionally. We need to join Communitiesb4Powercompanies who have the necessary experience we need & it’s needed right now, there’s no time to delay!
The plan right now is to “upgrade” the current Pylons from Spittal to Beauly! Western Isles to Beauly; Beauly to Peterhead; connecting with Peterhead then right down through Aberdeenshire & Angus to Tealing. The proposed new Super Pylons are nearly the same height as the Eiffel Tower, they are taller than Blackpool tower & will be three times taller than the Wallace monument. We cannot stand by & simply watch as the Scotland as we know it is destroyed! We also cannot discount the potential damage to health. We are told that living within 200 metres of our current pylons increases the incidence of leukaemia in children significantly they are also known to cause sleep disturbances. We do know the effects of living near superpylons. However we do know they will have a detrimental effect on house & land values.
To enable the energy to be converted from Direct Current to Alternated Current which the energy companies require for consumer use in the U.K.sub stations are to be built all over Scotland. The sub stations are enormous (five times the size of Parkhead, Ibrox or Murrayfield) which gives you a sense of scale. The substations will hum day & night.
Fiddes, in the heart of the Howe of the Mearns made famous by Lewis Grassic Gibbon in his widely acclaimed trilogy. Is one of the proposed sites. It is clear that SSEN intend to ride roughshod through communities having no regards to Scotland’s Historical or Cultural heritage. It is an abhorration!
In addition to the Wind Farms, Super Pylons, Substations we have BESS (Battery Energy Storage Systems) which enables power system operators & utilities to store energy for later use. The BESS system is an electrochemical device that charges from the grid, power plant or renewable sources to be discharged at a later date.
The Seagreen Wind Farm off Angus has 114 Wind Turbines generating enough energy for 1.6 million homes which equates to energy supply for 2/3rds or 66% of Scotlands homes. It went live in August 2023.
The Moray West Wind Farm has 60 wind turbines generating 50% of Scotlands energy needs.
It will be fully operational in 2025.
On Wednesday of last week Highland North & South councillors voted 11 votes to 9 to object to SSEN’s application to install Pylons on Skye. Following the decision SSEN asserted that lights will go off in Skye if they don’t get their destructive way. The decision will now go to a Public Enquiry.
Ofgem’s (the Power watchdog) approval of SSEN Electricity network upgrade for Argyll & Bute is a significant blow to No More Pylons (Dalmally) campaigners. The move by Ofgem is highly unusual as they do not usually invoke Final Needs Cases until the relevant consents are in place. It’s a worrying precedent that a Global Co & the U.K. regulator can agree to spend our money on a scheme that has still to receive full scrutiny of planning.
Recently Claire Countinho, U.K.s Energy minister signed an agreement with her German counterpart to supply renewable energy through a subsea
neuconnector from Scotland to Germany.
Scots pay more than any other area of the U.K. to upload our energy onto the National Grid. Scottish consumers are charged more for the energy we use. Sounds a good system, unfortunately just not for us! Many Scots live in fuel poverty. The question is Why?
The renewable energy industry has the potential to many, many times larger than the oil & gas industry providing cheap energy for generations to come.
This is the first in a series of blogs on this topic. Many people are working hard round the country to bring some common sense to our energy provision but what we need is for everyone to contact their Community Council, Councillor, MSP’s and MP to object to every application from SSEN and the Wind Farm operators.
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