Powering the UK’s energy boom: grid expansion design notes for civil engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

First reported on New Civil Engineer
30 Second Briefing
Power grid expansion in the North East of Scotland is being ramped up to connect large-scale offshore wind and North Sea energy projects into the UK transmission network. An experienced electrical engineer and IET member describes delivering new high‑voltage substations, long‑distance overhead lines and subsea cable links to move multi‑gigawatt outputs from coastal landing points to industrial centres. The work signals sustained demand for grid‑scale civil foundations, cable corridors, and substation platforms in challenging coastal and peatland ground conditions.
Technical Brief
- Similar grid‑scale schemes will drive sustained demand for specialist geotechnical investigation, peat stability assessment and tower foundation design.
Our Take
Within the 750 Infrastructure stories in our database, the UK features heavily in grid reinforcement, port upgrades and HVDC links, signalling that ‘energy boom’ discussions are increasingly tied to enabling works rather than just generation capacity.
The North East of Scotland appears frequently in our coverage as a hub for offshore wind assembly and oil-and-gas transition projects, which suggests that skills and supply-chain capacity there are likely to be a bottleneck – or an exportable asset – for UK-wide energy schemes.
Pieces tagged with both ‘Projects’ and ‘Sustainability’ in Britain often highlight consenting and grid-connection delays, so any roadmap discussed by the Institution of Engineering and Technology is likely to have practical implications for planning risk and programme phasing on major UK energy infrastructure.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
Related Articles
Related Industries & Products
Construction
Quality control software for construction companies with material testing, batch tracking, and compliance management.
Mining
Geotechnical software solutions for mining operations including CMRR analysis, hydrogeological testing, and data management.
CMRR-io
Streamline coal mine roof stability assessments with our cloud-based CMRR software featuring automated calculations, multi-scenario analysis, and collaborative workflows.
HYDROGEO-io
Comprehensive hydrogeological testing platform for managing, analysing, and reporting on packer tests, lugeon values, and hydraulic conductivity assessments.
GEODB-io
Centralised geotechnical data management solution for storing, accessing, and analysing all your site investigation and material testing data.


