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£700 million energy cable price tag “requires clarification”     5/11/12

►Pentland Road windfarm construction continues      

►Delayed sub-sea cable will hit community benefit

Comhairle chiefs are in talks with the Scottish Government, energy regulator Ofgem and power company SSE over sudden halt to building a subsea cable to export renewable energy from the islands.

The council sees the cable delay as a crisis and warns it risks having serious consequences which threatens to scupper major wind farms for the islands.

Two developments which have already received planning permission and more in the pipeline will be affected.

Cable costs soared from an initial £300 million to £460 million and now reaching £700 million.

The council is seeking clarity why the situation was allowed to develop to this stage and queried what was happening while the cost steadily increased.

Council leader Angus Campbell said: “A lot of renewable developments here will be affected - not just the large ones but also the smaller local community schemes.”

He fears the re-assessment of the business case “could mean further delay” with the real risk that the major developers - which have already put money up front into cable payments - may pull out of the island.

Mr Campbell said the hike in copper prices and a higher specification in the cable was at the root of the increase costs. But such a dramatic increase in such a short space of time still required clarification, he says.

He highlighted the plans for the subsea cable stretched back years so “why has this happened now.”

He said the Eishken wind farm has already ceased infrastructure and road works which meant an instant loss of job opportunities.

He added: “Other developers will be thinking if it is worth continuing. That is a real worry.

“It is really concerning we, as a country, cannot develop process which, after nine years, still have this uncertainty.”

This is the second time the subsea cable has been delayed. In 2010 Scottish and Southern Energy suspended the plans for the giant energy interconnector to run 60 miles under the Minch between Lewis and the mainland where it would link into the Beauly to Denney overhead transmission network.

At the time SSE said its national grid operator subsidiary SHETL “concluded that the lack of financial underwriting from electricity generators (attributed to the level of transmission charges) relating to the link from the Western Isles to the mainland meant it would not be able to conclude a contract for the supply of the necessary electricity cable.”

As a result, it withdrew its request to Ofgem for authorisation to make the investment.