MOST domestic customers will be happy with the sentiments in Jenny Hogan's letter regarding the upgrading of power lines (Letters, May 5), but they will not be sure who pays.
There is SSE Power Distribution and SSE Transmission Ltd in the north and Ms Hogan also mentions National Grid.
It can be argued that payment for capital investment should fall on the eventual consumers of the power being transported. A more refined model would recognise that spreading payments across the whole "universe" of customers will ease ability to pay for those in the more distant and sparsely populated areas where cost per consumer is much higher. Thus with the Royal Mail we still have the universal service obligation where letters to and from Orkney are charged at the same rate as letters to and from Orpington.
This is not the case any more with electricity. The northern and western half of Scotland pays higher distribution charges than in the rest of the UK to receive the electric power which is so vital to life. Most domestic customers will expect (but not know if it is so), that Scottish Hydro area consumers will be paying for the costs of repairing the Kintyre and Arran networks so badly damaged a year ago. They may also now expect Southern Electric area consumers to pay for repairs to the devastation in the south of England over this past winter.
Transparency in the electricity industry is improving, but more could be done to inform domestic customers about who is paying for the upgraded Beauly to Denny power line which travels through the Highlands but takes the power to consumers outwith the area. A new £1.3bn transmission link is being planned between Caithness and Moray and, most prominently, the continuing wrangle over the proposed "interconnector" to take renewables power south from the islands is a classic case of who pays?
There is an obvious need here for clear information to be given to the public. In former years we used to have a North of Scotland Electricity Consultative Council. Today, maybe SSE could issue a newsletter to all its Scottish customers with its annual report on 21 May. The Yes and No campaigns in the independence debate should certainly clarify their positions.
RJ Ardern,
26A Southside Road,
Inverness.
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