Electricity pylons

The art of power

The hard task of reconciling green energy with green pastures

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Readers' comments



The issue is cost. If the utility or owner can convince a community and rate payers to pay triple (or more) the cost of a typical lattice transmission line for an exotic structure, then go for it. Economically, it makes no sense and then it would not be solely a transmission structure, it would be a work of art and it would cost as such.

Today, their are many options for lattice towers that enhance their visual appearance. A dulled shade can be applied to the last step in the galvanizing process to make the steel dark gray in color which tends to make the tower be perceived as blending into the environment.

In the Western half of the US, dulled steel for the sake of keeping up appearances is commonly supplied now. Tubular steel poles are also used in areas of land congestion or agricultural areas. However, the tubular steel poles are double the price of typical lattice (for voltages equal to or above 345kV).
The idea of mounting some form of wind turbine to transmission structures has multiple technical (electrical) challenges that will probably keep this idea from becoming a reality. You can't simply "plug in" a wind turbine into the grid. Its electricity is generated a much lower voltage and would need to be collected via. a secondary line and routed through a substation to step up the voltage, etc. etc. the technical challenges go on and on.

I must admit, the curved structure in "The art of power" is interesting. It strikes me as definitely femine- perhaps a portion of the female anatomy.

Javed Rashid

The design seems to be a double circuit tower, and it employs post insulators . Also it includes a guy wire , all of this will make it expensive , many times expensive in fact . The elements of the chosen design are not exactly new, post insulator lines were often used for 66 kV and 33 kV , guyed towers are used for ehv and hv transmission, the Russians had a guyed wire 500 kV design and PCC poles etc used guy wire features .
Seems that all of this expense will drive prices further up, if people are willing to pay more for elegance and landscape beauty fhere would be no harm in adopting the design, although I suspect if the linkage of the new design and rate hikes is spelled out there will be very few takers


There are 306 wind farms in the UK with 5,700MW capacity

3,400MW are under construction and 9,000MW are in planning, which on a good day would give 18GW of the 60GW this country uses daily.

88,000 pylons, or even 22,000 of the national grid pylons generating 100kW each would add up to 8.8GW or 2.2GW all over the country.

Can this country afford to import oil continually when the balance of payments is so bad? Or is energy independence absolutely vital for our standard of living to be maintained.

Is there really any choice?

With 2.5M unemployed, costing billions to support them, wouldn't it be better to use them to construct a new national grid that generates power?

Wouldn't that make the UK more competitive?
It is not surprising that the country gets less competitive, when the economy is organised to hold people doing nothing, when they are not needed by industry or government?

If the government cannot take a broader overview and find ways to energy independence, as soon as possible, our standard of living will go down, without a doubt.


Less visible is better. If the wires are arranged so they are all in the same vertical plane, like a giant fence, they are much less noticeable. This of course requires a taller, but singular pylon, which is also less noticeable than the usual truss tower.

Mr. Marcus

I agree with the general thrust of guest-ieiioeo's comments. It does seem a shame that of the 250 or so entries only one will be tried. Considering the UK prides itself on a competitive energy market, why not extend that to innovation in transmission. As the preceding post shows, there are other ideas out there including mixing transmission and generation. Presumably some of this reticence is cost related or owing to complications in the planning process.


The redesign of electricity pylons could have been so much more than just a power transmission line support structure.

To help use the land as best as possible, the pylons could have been designed with integral wind-turbines. This saves having to cover quite so much space/land with wind farms, or perhaps, when all the oil and gas has gone, there won't be any option left but to do this.

The turbine types could be horizontal or vertical axis.

Part of the structure could be clad in solar cells as well to assist in power generation by all means possible.

But is this an ideal opportunity that has been lost by separate companies and committees, that each has its own limited objectives, without an overview of the end result of each strategy?


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