National Grid Buys Teesside Land for Planned Substation Near AI Datacentre

National Grid has agreed to buy 73 acres of land at Dorman Point on Teesside, in north-east England, as a step towards building a new electricity substation there. The Guardian reported that the site is owned by Teesworks, and that the deal was first reported by Sky News.

A substation is a facility that changes the voltage of electricity so it can be moved safely across a network. The planned Teesside substation could supply power to a large neighbouring datacentre, a building housing the computing equipment used for artificial intelligence. Planning applications have been submitted for an AI datacentre project of nearly 500,000 square metres at Teesworks.

Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, said the Teesside site would have up to 3.2 gigawatts of capacity. A gigawatt is a unit of power, and 3.2 gigawatts is a measure of how much electricity the site could handle.

Balfour Beatty was reported to be in line to deliver the Teesworks substation for National Grid, with Steel River Power also heavily involved. Steel River Power Limited was created to build, own and operate a private wire network, meaning an electricity network that is privately owned rather than run by the main grid operator.

Teesworks says its own private wire network offers connections to National Grid at 11 and 66 kilovolts, two voltage levels used to move power locally. It says up to 400 megawatts of capacity is currently available for new tenants.