ELECTRICITY is flowing through the first 30 miles of a highly controversial transmission line for the first time, three years after it was approved and after almost a decade of bitter debate.

Scottish Hydro Electric ­Transmission, a subsidiary of SSE, yesterday marked the "energisation" of the north section of the 137-mile Beauly/Denny power line, between Beauly and Fort Augustus.

Some 136 towers are now ­carrying the line the first 31 miles, leaving SSE with another 400 to erect over the next year and a half.

It is the first time that a power line with an operating voltage of 400kV has been used in the North of Scotland.

The company has 86 more miles of towers to complete to its finishing point near Dunblane, after which the remaining miles are the responsibility of Scottish Power.

The line has been designed to carry south the large volume of electricity expected from wind, wave and tidal energy projects being built or planned in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Conservationists warn there are still battles ahead over the £600 million development and say the "damage Beauly/Denny is doing to the landscape is far worse than people imagined".

However, SSE insists the project in the past two years has been closely monitored and has shown its worth. It said it has generated around £86 million in Gross Value Added (GVA), an economic measure of the value of goods and services, to the Scots economy and created around 1500 jobs directly and indirectly.

David Gardner, SSE's director of transmission, said the economic spin-off had been enormous.

He added: "The hotels are full and you can't get a pie in a bakers in Beauly by the afternoon."

He admitted some jobs were taken by people from abroad, but added they were being replaced by local labour as they left.

He saw this "skilling" of the community as one of the most important legacies that would become obvious in SSE's forthcoming multibillion-pound programme of grid upgrades for the north of Scotland.

At the new giant substation near Beauly the ground work has already been done to accommodate the power coming in from the Western Isles.

However, a final decision on laying a subsea cable to carry it will not be made until the end of the year when the level of subsidy is agreed by government.

The first impact of the new line will be the dismantling of the remaining pylons down to Dunblane to allow the new line to be built. The new line will allow transmission to be diverted round by the east coast route as this work is done.

SSE stress this is a replacement line and that while 600 new towers are being built there will be an overall decrease of more than 200 as existing pylons come down.

However, some are almost twice as high, up to 213ft and almost the height of the Wallace Monument at Stirling, which has outraged sections of local and environmental opinion.

Dave Morris, director of Ramblers Scotland, said he was convinced the project had been dictated by the Westminster Government from the start.

He said: "The Department of Energy was determined to impose the project on Scotland regardless of the views of Scottish people. The Scottish Government had no way out after the recommendation of the public inquiry reporter.

"The damage it is doing to the landscape is far worse than people imagined. There will be a massive uproar when the power line gets to Stirling with its massive towers."