WORK ON POWER LINK between Caithness and Moray will begin in earnest this week when the NKT Victoria begins laying 180miles of high-voltage cabling on the bottom of the Moray Firth.
The brand new vessel will be using state-of-the-art equipment to carry the new high voltage cabling from Noss Head on Caithness to Portgordon – where it will be linked overland into the national grid network.
The long awaited Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks’ (SSEN) project is being undertaken at a cost of £1.1billion and will be undertaken in two stages, the first to the midpoint of the Firth and the second following the path of the previously laid cabling from there to Portgordon.
Work has been under way already in preparing the landfall site as well as clearance work on the route the cable will take, including preparing a trench into which the NKT Victoria will lay the cable.
Lead project manager for SSEN is Brian Mitchell, who explained: “The installation of the sub-sea cable is one of the major components of the Caithness to Moray project, so the arrival of the NKT Victoria marks an exciting milestone.”
The laying work is expected to continue throughout the summer on a project that will see renewable power created in the north of Scotland being carried throughout Scotland and beyond.