Subsea cable arrives at Harris

Subsea cable arrives in Harris

8 August 2021

A new electricity subsea has reached Harris after crossing under the Minch.

The 33,000-volt link stretches along the seabed from Skye.

24 miles of cable - four miles longer than required - was specially manufactured in China, taking four months due to Covid restrictions. It was loaded onto chartered MV Maersk Connector for the job.

The specialist cable layer ship landed the Skye end of the cable ashore on Monday morning following a seabed survey and route clearance.

She took the cable to the mouth of Loch Gheocrab and anchored overnight.

Equipment, a winch and excavators have been waiting at Beacravik since last week to heave the cable ashore.

The link will reconnect Lewis and Harris to the mainland grid.

Orange coloured buoyancy floats will keep the last few hundred metres of cable bobbing on top of the sea until its guided by divers in the water with winches and excavators pulling in from the beach.

The cable will be protected in a 200 metre long clip-on cast iron pipe at the landing area.

Later this month engineers will tie-up the link into local substations.

SSE aims to have the new cable energised by the end of the August permitting local wind turbines to produce green electricity again after an 11 month stoppage.

The Stornoway power station will then revert to its back-up role.

Lewis and Harris have been cut off from the national electricity grid since October when a major fault occurred in the existing submarine distribution cable connecting to the Scottish mainland to the only energy link between the locations.

The broken section is about 130 metres deep, mid-way in the Minch - too far down to carry out repairs.

The cable is part of a line that carries power from the National Grid to Stornoway. The entire link comprises an overland cable from Fort Augustus to Skye, the subsea section between Skye and Harris and a further overland section running through Lewis to Stornoway.

MV Maersk Connector