By Stephen McMullin

Copyright belfastlive

Earlier this year, Northern Ireland Electricity Networks (NIE Networks) announced a major six-year investment programme to rebuild and future-proof the Northern Ireland electricity network.

Worth around £250 million, the Big Network Rebuild is a once in a generation rebuild of the electricity networks to ensure there is a robust and resilient network which can also connect whatever we need it to, in the future as we look towards a decarbonised future.

The project is already underway, with works taking place across all of Northern Ireland to ensure approximately 14,000km of electricity networks are rebuilt and refurbished. These works will continue throughout NIE Networks’ current price control period which runs until 2031.

Inevitably, with a rebuild of this scale, there will be some unavoidable disruption and even electricity outages as the work progresses. NIE Networks are working hard to ensure these interruptions are kept to a minimum, taking precautions such as supplying customers from other circuits, carrying out some work using Live Line technology and exploring new alternatives to turning customers’ electricity off such as high and low voltage generation and high voltage Live Line pole changing.

You can find out if your area is likely to be affected by checking the map at nienetworks.co.uk. Anyone impacted by outages will be sent a planned outage notification card through the post with details of the dates and times electricity supply will be affected.

For more information on The Big Rebuild, including the most recent updates and information on how it may affect you, visit nienetworks.co.uk