The latest stage of work on the Eastland Scheme, funded by a £14 million investment into Manchester’s electricity grid, is set to begin this month and take under two months to complete.
The project includes the installation of 10km of new underground cables and upgrades to three substations. According to Electricity North West, which is carrying out the work, the development will improve reliability for 30,000 local residents and businesses.
Stephen Forshaw, who is overseeing the work in Manchester for Electricity North West, said: “The Eastlands scheme has been a major engineering project and an important one for the growth in the city.
“The latest stage will see a further 1,100m of underground cables installed and once connected, will provide additional space on the network for homes and businesses in the area. We’ve contacted businesses in the immediate area to make them aware of work taking place as we want to be as transparent as possible and work with customers to ensure disruption is kept to a minimum.”
The future of UK grid investment
Investment into the UK’s grid network is a key step towards net zero.
In May, the UK’s transmission and distribution operator National Grid announced that it will invest £60 billion in network and grid upgrades over the next five years, a plan which CEO John Pettigrew called “unprecedented in its scale and ambition”. As part of these plans, over 50,000km of conductor will be installed or replaced in the UK, enough to wrap around the earth’s circumference with 10,000km to spare.
A month prior, National Grid announced that it had partnered with flexibility services platform Electron to boost flexibility services across the UK power grid.
The transition to greener technologies could also benefit local economies. Research by the Association for Decentralised Energy (ADE) recently revealed that the Greater Manchester region could unlock £18.2 billion of new investment by transitioning towards heat networks.
