After four years of working with SSEN and many local landowners in Lower and Upper Heyford to resolve our regular power cuts, the SSEN Resilience Project will commence in September.
The Background – the village electricity infrastructure is decades old, and it is served by overhead cabling which crosses the flood plain from Lower Heyford making it vulnerable to a range of disruptions. Additionally, there are two transformers (one at the Village Hall and one behind the water fountain on School Lane) which serve different parts of the village and are not connected. This explains why sometimes half the village has power whilst the other half does not.
The Solution – SSEN are investing c£1.2m in the project to establish a new high voltage underground cable along the road from Lower Heyford and an additional high voltage supply will come from Heyford Park providing two incoming high voltage sources to the village transformers. The two transformers will be linked by a new underground cable coming from the Village Hall transformer through the allotments and down the High Street to the School Lane transformer. There will be no changes to the supply to individual households but, if there is a loss of power from either the Lower Heyford or Heyford Park source, the entire village can be switched to the alternative supply.
Next Steps – the SSEN team and their contractor are finalising the detailed implementation plans. Updates to villagers on progress and any potential disruption will be sent out like this via the UHPC email list, along with the web page linked HERE.
Thank you to everyone involved in keeping this project moving forward!