Eastern Green Link 1

Construction began on 13 February 2025. Eastern Green Link 1, or EGL1, will run from Torness, beside the nuclear power station on the East Lothian coast, to the Hawthorn Pit substation at Murton in County Durham. It makes landfall in England north of Seaham, on the Durham coast.

The subsea route is about 190 km, but because the link uses two cables it needs almost 400 km of HVDC cable in total, as pv magazine noted at the start of works. Prysmian won the cable contract in late 2023. The converter stations at each end come from Metlen Energy & Metals working with GE Vernova’s grid business. GE Vernova describes a 525 kV, 2 GW bipole with voltage-source converters, and the Eastern Green Links article on Wikipedia adds that the cables are XLPE.

The project belongs to SP Energy Networks, the Scottish transmission owner in the south of Scotland, and National Grid, which owns the network in England and Wales. Ofgem gave its approval in December 2022.

Why a cable at sea, parallel to a coast that already has overhead lines? pv magazine summed up the aim of both east-coast links as moving renewable power from Scotland’s generation-rich north to demand centres in southern Great Britain. EGL1 adds 2,000 MW of north–south capacity to do that. It follows the model of the Western HVDC Link on the other side of Britain, and it is the smaller and earlier of two east-coast cables; Eastern Green Link 2, from Peterhead to Yorkshire, is being built at the same time.

The cost is quoted differently in different places. pv magazine gave £2.5 billion at the start of construction; Wikipedia gives an earlier budget of £1.294 billion. Which scope each figure covers is not stated, so neither should be quoted as the final cost.

Offshore installation was due to start in the summer of 2025, and the link is expected to begin operation in 2029. If you want to see why transmission constraints drive projects like this, the grid congestion guide explains how a full line turns into payments to switch wind farms off.