The expenditure required to provide electricity and other utilities to facilitate the development of up to 400 houses and business premises on the Lowood Estate - purchased last month by Scottish Borders Council - could run into many millions of pounds, according to technical reports provided for the local authority in 2017.
At a council meeting in December when councillors were told the 109-acres of land together with a collection of properties at Lowood had been acquired from the Hamilton family for £9.6 million it was claimed the estate was not worth that amount of money.
And Councillor Stuart Bell, leader of the opposition SNP group at SBC added: "We'll need to sell it all for over £11 million just to break even. Reports we have seen in private say there will also be significant infrastructure costs to develop the site."
So far the council has not published any details of the investment needed for infrastructure at Lowood/Tweedbank which is the subject of a so-called master plan. But some information regarding utilities is available in a 105-page document containing reports from several firms of consultants commissioned by SBC. To date that information does not appear to have attracted the attention of the press and media, and it has received little if any publicity.
Not Just Sheep & Rugby was particularly interested in documents from engineering consultancy K J Tait setting out a proposed utility servicing strategy for the area. One of the report indicates the cost of a new electricity sub-station for Tweedbank/Lowood would be in the region of £4 million.
Here is Taits' assessment so far as electricity provision is concerned. Note: MVA stands for mega volt amp, and if total load requirement is 1,000 volts and 5,000 amps it can be expressed as 5MVA.
"Our load study shows a total of 5MVA of new load. This is based on estimated diversified loads at each site identified for development. The rated capacity of the Tweedbank – Melrose 11kV ring is 6MVA and its current maximum load is 5MVA.
"It is anticipated that this will be inadequate for the anticipated eventual load at Tweedbank. The limited available capacity on the Tweedbank/Melrose 11kV ring will require early intervention to establish a solution to the issues outlined in this study and allow network reinforcement works to be carried out in line with the proposed timescales of the development.
"Developing any of Phases A, B and C north of the railway line at the initial stage would require a significant infrastructure extension to the existing 11kV network within Tweedbank and a budget cost of £100k should be allowed for this plus an additional £60k for each phase to establish a substation although there may be some scope for rationalisation with regard to the number of substations required. Developing phases D, E and F initially would be less expensive because of the proximity to the existing Tweedbank 11kV infrastructure but a budget cost of £60k should be allowed for each phase to establish a substation although there may be some rationalisation with regard to the number of substations required.
"Once the capacity required for the new Tweedbank Development reaches 1000kVA a new 11kV network ring will be required to be established out of Netherdale Primary Substation. This may prove problematical because of the geography and the difficulty crossing the Tweed at this location. Provision of this new 11kV network ring is budgeted at £400k and will require at least 18 months to design and construct.
"It may be necessary to establish a new Primary Substation in the Tweedbank area depending on final loads or other developments in the wider area. The budget cost for this is £4m. This may be considered as an alternative to a new 11kV ring out of Netherdale Primary substation but the high cost and potential future load growth would require careful consideration before this option was implemented."
The utilities report also looked at gas, water and telecommunications provision although no specific monetary values had been put on bringing these on site in the 2017 document.
A separate report from K J Tait examined the likely Carbon Strategy for future developments at Tweedbank.
It explained: "At present, the site at Lowood has no gas infrastructure. If no gas infrastructure could be provided to this site, solutions such as air source heat pumps or district heating would need to be investigated to pass building regulations. There is potential for the Lowood site to be constructed with a new district heating system with perhaps biomass as the heat source.
"The council would support such a network if it can be accommodated without unacceptable significant adverse impacts or effects, giving due regard to relevant environmental, community and cumulative impact considerations. In connecting to an existing network, there are none at present near to the proposed zones.
"The first of these areas, Lowood, is located to the south of
the River Tweed and north west of Tweedbank railway station. The plan for this
area is for the development of a minimum 250-400 dwellings which includes a
provision of 25% affordable housing. Allied to the housing development, there
is the expectation that ancillary retail and commercial developments are
incorporated. This will provide a modest level of employment within the area.
There will also need to be an investigation into impacts the development will
have upon Tweedbank Primary School".
The report said ownership of the district heating system was important as
the owners would be responsible for providing sufficient funding for maintenance.
"If
the system deteriorates it will become inefficient and consequently may lose
customers", the report warned. "The reliability will also be compromised. The infrastructure of a
system may not be adopted or owned by existing utility infrastructure
providers. Consequently, it is likely that a special purpose vehicle [a company] will have
to be created to manage and maintain the infrastructure so that it efficiently
serves, attracts and maintains customers.
"In addition, the owner of the system
cannot force take up and so cannot guarantee householders or other users will
sign up to the system. In terms of size, it would be likely that a biomass
boiler in the region of 406kW would be able to provide a large proportion of
the heating needs of the residential development. This would have the potential
to mitigate around 19.8% of carbon emissions. The estimated installed cost of
the network would be around £263,765 which would produce a payback of 11 years’
due to RHI payments."
Readers may recall that SBC spent a significant sum of money in 2013 on a consultant's report which outlined plans for a district heating system linked to an incinerator which would have treated Borders waste and converted it into electricity.
A special vehicle was set up to take forward the project. But the waste treatment facility never got built after councillors awarded a multi-million pound contract to an insolvent company from Dorset and an Isle of Man investment fund now under investigation by liquidators after shareholders' and investors' money "disappeared".
The special vehicle called Scottish Borders District Heating Company Ltd was dissolved in May 2016.
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