Scotland’s renewable energy story is usually told through wind farms, household bills and climate targets. But another story is being built more quietly, through converter stations, subsea cables, engineering hubs and power corridors that are changing the geography of the country’s electricity system. Hitachi Energy’s growing Scottish footprint offers one way to understand that larger transformation.
Scotland is being rewired. Not metaphorically, not as a campaign phrase, and not as a matter for one political party to claim or another to dismiss. It is happening in steel, cable, planning applications, regulated investment, global engineering contracts and the long grey lines of infrastructure that now run through some of the country’s most exposed places.
Hitachi Energy’s work in Scotland reads like a map of a country being turned into a central corridor for Britain’s next electricity system. From Caithness, Moray and Shetland to Peterhead, the Western Isles, Inverness and Glasgow, the company’s Scottish record sits inside a much wider transformation of the grid.
That transformation may be necessary. Scotland has large renewable resources, ageing transmission infrastructure, growing offshore wind ambitions and communities that need secure power. But necessary does not mean simple. It does not mean costless. And it certainly does not mean the public should be expected to look politely out of the window while the technical people get on with rearranging the nation beneath their feet.
The fresh significance is that Hitachi’s corporate presence is now following the infrastructure. In 2025, the company opened a project office in Inverness to support major grid projects in northern Scotland and to work close to SSEN Transmission, one of its key delivery partners. Hitachi said the office would support local skilled jobs, the transmission supply chain and Scottish and UK projects.
Later the same year, Hitachi announced a new engineering centre in Glasgow, backed by a £1.7 million Scottish Enterprise grant toward an investment of more than £3 million. The centre is expected to create around 90 specialist roles, including engineers and project managers, and will support upgrades to the UK electrical grid as well as projects across Hitachi’s global network.
When a global energy technology company opens offices in Inverness and Glasgow, when converter stations are planned or built in the north, when subsea cables connect Scotland’s generation zones to the wider British system, Scotland is no longer just the place where electricity is produced. It is becoming the place through which electricity policy is made visible.
The early spine can be seen in the Caithness Moray high voltage direct current link, which Hitachi describes as connecting the electricity grid on both sides of the Moray Firth. The company says it designed, engineered, supplied and commissioned converter stations at Blackhillock in Moray and Spittal in Caithness, with around 160 kilometres of submarine and underground cables and capacity of up to 1,200 megawatts.
Then came Shetland. Hitachi’s Scottish work includes the link connecting Shetland to the mainland, a project intended to improve security of supply for the islands while allowing renewable electricity generated there to move into the wider system. Together, Caithness Moray and Shetland form part of what Hitachi has described as Europe’s first regional direct current grid using voltage sourced converter technology.
The scope then widens toward the south. Eastern Green Link 2 is a major connection between Peterhead in Aberdeenshire and Drax in North Yorkshire, designed to move electricity between Scotland and England. It is part of a wider set of transmission projects intended to move renewable power from where it is generated to where demand is higher. SSEN Transmission describes the north of Scotland projects in its Pathway to 2030 programme as part of a major upgrade of the electricity transmission network across Great Britain.
The Western Isles are also part of the emerging map. SSEN Transmission says the Western Isles high voltage direct current link is required to connect onshore and offshore wind in and around the islands to the Great Britain transmission system, while reducing reliance on diesel powered electricity generation.
Read together, these projects show Scotland moving into a new role. The north and islands are not simply remote places at the edge of the grid. They are becoming strategic generation and transmission zones for the wider system. That may bring investment, jobs, supply chain opportunities and better infrastructure. But it also brings disruption, land use questions, community pressure, environmental concerns, visual impact, construction traffic and the familiar Scottish question of whether value created here stays here in any durable form.
This is where Scottish public interest lies. Does Scotland have enough visibility, leverage and benefit inside decisions whose consequences are local but whose purposes are national?
The governance position is not straightforward. The Scottish Government says energy policy is largely reserved to the UK Government and that it has no formal role in regulating the electricity system, apart from statutory planning and consenting processes. Ofgem regulates energy networks across England, Scotland and Wales, including the price control framework that governs network company spending and returns. Its RIIO 3 price control runs from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2031.
NESO, the National Energy System Operator, says it moves high voltage electricity through the system using infrastructure owned by three transmission companies: National Grid Electricity Transmission, Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission Ltd and SP Energy Networks.
That means many Scottish projects sit inside a Great Britain electricity architecture. They may be physically located in Scotland, developed by companies with Scottish operations, and subject to Scottish planning and consenting processes, but the system they serve is wider than Scotland. It is shaped by UK energy policy, Ofgem regulation, system planning, transmission company business plans and global technology suppliers.
This makes scrutiny essential.
The benefits are real, but uneven. Hitachi Energy benefits as a major supplier of converter technology, engineering expertise and long term service capability. SSEN Transmission benefits as the north of Scotland transmission owner delivering a major investment programme. The wider GB grid benefits because Scottish renewable power can be moved to areas of higher demand. The UK’s clean power and energy security ambitions benefit because Scotland’s geography, wind resource and coastline are central to the plan.
Scottish communities may benefit too, but that should be proven rather than assumed. This is not a nationalist question in the party political sense. It is a civic question for every Scot, whatever ballot paper they prefer. A country that hosts the generation, cables, converter stations and substations of a new electricity age should be able to ask plain questions without being treated as troublesome.
Who owns the assets? Who earns the regulated return? How much of the cost is recovered through consumer bills? How much work goes to Scottish firms and workers? What guarantees exist for community benefit? Will the Highlands and Islands receive better resilience, or simply more infrastructure passing through? Will Scottish households see any price advantage from proximity to generation, or remain exposed to a wider pricing system?
These questions matter in Wick and Stornoway, but also in Glasgow and Inverness. They matter in rural Aberdeenshire and in every Scottish home where a rising energy bill arrives. Scotland needs to insist that the future being built across its glens, coasts, islands and cities is not merely something done in Scotland, but something that leaves Scotland stronger.
