The replacement subsea power cable to reconnect Lewis and Harris to the National Grid is on its way from China.
Manufacturing was completed earlier this month and the cable is currently on a bulk carrier / general cargo ship which departed Shanghai on Monday, heading for the Suez Canal and then onward to Weymouth, where she is expected to arrive in early June.
For those interested, the cargo boat is called Tian Qi and can be tracked on marine traffic apps.
The news has been warmly welcomed by community wind farms including Point and Sandwick Trust, the biggest community-
But Calum Macdonald, development manager for Point and Sandwick Trust, has confirmed the cable, which links Harris to the mainland via Skye, is currently en route to the UK and “on track” to be positioned and energised “by August”.
He added: “It’s expected to arrive in Weymouth in early June and up in the Minch by mid to late June.”
Once the cable has arrived, “a spell of about four to five calm days” is required to lay it, which will hopefully happen sometime in July, and then the cable needs to be brought into operation.
“If they get a spell of good weather they will seize the moment and it should be all ready and energised in August. If they miss that opportunity, if the weather window doesn’t open up, then it gets more difficult as you move into the autumn and winter months.”
The cable break meant Point and Sandwick Trust, along with other island community wind farms, had to immediately suspend all charitable donations and maintained only core functions.
It is estimated that charitable donations will resume in early 2023, after the community wind farm has built up prudent financial reserves, to carry it through any future crises.
Mr Macdonald said: “Of course the restoration of the cable means that we can start earning income again but we’ll have to build up a reserve before we are able to start distributing that income.
“One of the headaches we face, looking forward, is that the insurance cover that we had for cable outages is being withdrawn by all the insurance companies, so that means that we have to build up a good reserve to tide us through a future outage.”
The timescale of donations resuming might be “more towards the end of next year” but Calum stressed: “That is all dependant on having a good output and good prices for our output”. Electricity purchase prices are “fine” just now but they can vary.
“If we have bad prices, then it takes a lot longer to build up that reserve.”
The cable is the same size as the one that broke despite community groups including Point and Sandwick Trust having called on SSE to installed one with much greater capacity to allow the expansion of renewables development on the island.
The groups continue to call collectively for a second cable and pressing to meet with representatives from Scottish Government about the matter.
Mr Macdonald said: “The cable is the same size cable as before, although because it is newer it will probably be able to carry a lot more energy. It will probably go up to near 28MW, maybe 30MW, compared to the 22MW.”
He admitted the community groups were “obviously disappointed” by the refusal to consider a bigger cable, adding: “All the community energy groups were pushing for a much bigger cable – but that decision has been taken. We are now pushing very hard to get a second cable to be installed which would be the same size but would allow the total capacity to go up to 60MW.
“We’re written to Scottish Government and we had a response, which was non-
“They agreed to meet with Community Energy Scotland representatives but they declined to meet with the community energy groups. But we’ll keep pressing and I’m sure we will eventually get the meeting we seek.”
Isles’ new subsea power cable on its way from China
22 May 2021
The replacement cable is to be laid between Harris and Skye
MV Tian Qi