Roads brought to standstill as giant transformer begins 1,000-mile trip in Stafford

Measuring 18ft long, 12ft wide and 13ft tall, the massive structure left Alstom in Stafford as it made the long journey to Liverpool before it will be shipped to Scandinavia.

It is part of a £190 million contract for the power giant, which is supplying new transformers to link up parts of the Swedish electricity grid.

The journey was delayed by around two hours after an axle bent on the trailer.

It set off from Alstom in Lichfield Road at 11am yesterday before going along Weston Road, Beaconside and up the A34 to Stone.

After travelling through Stone it carried on north to join the M6 by Newcastle-under-Lyme. Alstom Grid was awarded a contract worth approximately £190m by the Swedish government-owned utility operator Svenska Kraftnät for the 1440 MW South-West Link.

The project will connect Barkeryd in central Sweden to Hurva in the south, using High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology.

This transmission project will use Alstom Grid's HVDC MaxSineTM Voltage Source Converter (VSC) technology. Under the terms of the contract, Alstom will supply HVDC converter stations at both ends, as well as control and protection, converter transformers, construction and project management. The South-West Link project is forecasted for completion at the end of 2014.

The HVDC Centre of Excellence in Stafford is the main Alstom centre involved in the project.

The transformer is the ninth to be supplied by workers in Stafford as part of the project.

Alstom spokesman Jonathan Smith said: "Our Stafford site is a world leader in this sort of technology and the only place in the country where transformers are built.

"We are supplying transformers all over the world to places such as Brazil and India, as well as here in the UK."