UK’s fifth subsea electricity superhighway in the making?

Offshore marine survey operations are scheduled to begin soon at what would be the UK’s fifth subsea electricity superhighway, connecting Scotland and England.

Ireland-based XOCEAN is in charge of carrying out the marine survey works for the Eastern Green Link 5 (EGL5) project using seven remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and two support vessels.

The marine geophysical survey activities are expected to take place from April 23 until the end of June, subject to weather.

According to the project’s notice to mariners, the survey will include non-intrusive geophysical work to collect bathymetric data, seabed imagery, and sub-bottom imaging, and the survey vessels shall be unmanned vessels/uncrewed surface vessels.

The EGL links form part of planned electricity grid reinforcements to boost the capability of the existing UK transmission network and facilitate increased flows of planned renewable generation in the North to demand centers to the South, supporting the ambition of enabling 50 GW of offshore wind generation by 2030 and achieving a net-zero economy by 2050.

EGL5 comprises a 2 GW, 525 kV high voltage direct current (HVDC) connection between offshore Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) Transmission’s licensed area to the National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) Lincolnshire Connection Node.

This includes an HVDC offshore cable about 585 kilometers long and around 10 kilometers of HVDC onshore cable and an HVDC converter station.

Construction on EGL1 started this February, but the project was recently pushed back by 16 months due to supply chain constraints. Construction of EGL2 started in September 2024.