The recent National Grid public consultation session at Weston Village Hall was the usual broad brush PR event, and light on detail considering it was a “targeted” consultation.
But, we experienced possibly the longest and most embarrassingly awkward silence at a public consultation event ever.
David Rains (Meridian Action Group) confronted NG staff making the point that their presentation failed to illustrate the totality of all proposed for Lincolnshire.
As an example we pointed out that there was zero mention of the connection to Weston Marsh from Meridian.
The NG expert said this event was only about Grimsby to Walpole, Weston Marsh to East Midlands and the two A and B substation locations at Weston Marsh.
Meridian Solar, he said, was a private enterprise and not NG. David asked who would own the pylons connecting Meridian to Weston Marsh.
The silence, punctuated with ums and ers, dragged on and on. Until at last the NG expert said: “National Grid, I suppose.”
Despite his defence for Meridian not featuring, not even the overhead link line, there were full illustrations of lines from Outer Dowsing and EGL.
Smoke and mirrors and he was visibly choking on the smoke.
They were unable, or unwilling, to list all that would be connecting to the two substations, referring us to NESO and the TEC register.
They dodged a question about how much spare capacity the substations might have, as we expressed concerns about the uncertainties around what is connecting, and what more might be coming.
They did say that the substations would be built to meet existing demand, but agreed that demand could not yet be certain until some projects had approval or NESO confirmed connections. All a bit contradictory.
They did say there were no plans to expand the current proposed sizes of the substations.
Any expansion would be down to further approved demand for connections… in which case it would be down to NG to expand!
They continued to resist allegations of planning by stealth, insisting that they had said some time shortly after the non-statutory consultation for Weston Marsh that there “might” have to be two substations.
We said we were not convinced that the requirement for a multi-million pound construction was not advanced enough that it could not have been made public sooner.
The application to SHDC will be for a substation about 70 per cent the size of the planned final size of substation A in order to meet earlier demand for the Outer Dowsing connection.
We said that the sensible way forward now, in fairness to everyone, was for a pause to await the NESO report due in 2027 on what power is required where.
They came back with the hoary old chestnut that demand for electricity is galloping forwards so fast that there can be no delays.
That, and the millions being paid in curtailment fees to switch off wind farms for which construction was permitted BEFORE a network existed to use the additional energy being developed.
As an MP recently said: “It’s like building factories before there are any roads.”
Many carts put before numerous horses.
There are people’s homes here and here.
Andrew Malkin
Moulton
