NATIONAL Grid has confirmed today that it will not be erecting 50-metre high pylons through the Lake District National Park to carry electricity generated from a new power station. Instead the National Grid’s North West Coast Connections project will run 400kV cables around the west of Cumbria from Carlisle in the north to Heysham in the south to provide connections from the proposed Moorside power station to the electricity grid. It plans to look at putting 23.4km (14.5 miles) of new line underground through the entire western section of the Lake District National Park. This could also see the existing lines there being removed completely, leaving this part of the park free of pylons for the first time in 50 years.
Westmorland Gazette 24th Oct 2016 read more »
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National Grid to spend £1.9bn to keep power lines out of sight in Lake District and wider Cumbria in Moorside power plant connection project. More than half of the £2.8bn being spent on the 102-mile cabling scheme to link NuGen’s Moorside plant in Cumbria to the wider network will go towards making sections of the project less visible. National Grid’s “extensive measures” are aimed at reducing “the impact of the project on the landscape of Cumbria while balancing this with the need to keep energy bills affordable”. A £1.2bn tunnel will be constructed under Morecambe Bay to avoid the south part of the Lake District national park, while plans to take down existing low voltage pylons, owned by Electricity North West rather than National Grid, and to replace them with fewer, taller pylons will cost around £465m. A further £460m will go towards burying power lines underground in a 14.5 mile stretch in the western Lake District park.
City AM 24th Oct 2016 read more »
National Grid has unveiled plans to spend £460m burying new power lines through the Lake District, in a U-turn that will cost seven times more than erecting pylons. The utility giant had originally planned to build 160ft-tall pylons through a 14.5-mile stretch of the national park, as part of a 102-mile cabling project along the west coast of Cumbria to connect up NuGen’s proposed new nuclear plant at Moorside. But after fierce opposition from campaigners, who warned the pylons would devastate the scenery and could jeopardise the Lake District’s bid for Unesco world heritage site status, National Grid on Monday proposed burying the cables under the park.
Telegraph 24th Oct 2016 read more »