7 ms·

Something like 400,000 people are opposing the Norwich-Tilbury power lines to bring wind energy to where it's used. Including a Green Party MP: https://www.diss

Something like 400,000 people are opposing the Norwich-Tilbury power lines to bring wind energy to where it's used. Including a Green Party MP: https://www.dissmercury.co.uk/news/24840985.green-mp-adrian-ramsay-slams-wensum-valley-pylons-decision https://www.dissmercury.co.uk/news/24840985.green-mp-adrian-.... And you'd better believe wherever they buried the lines they'd have objections and expensive consultations about the disruption and the HoUsE VaLuEs caused by trenching, drilling and service structures. Like this objection from a village near (but not actually on) the underground stretch near Manningtree: https://holtonstmary-pc.gov.uk/assets/Documents-Parish-Council/PC-response-to-NG-July-2024-CR-1-26.07.24.pdf https://holtonstmary-pc.gov.uk/assets/Documents-Parish-Counc...

notTooFarGone 11mo ago
Who opposes Power lines? Never heard that this is a thing. As a foreign influence I'd be delighted to target all infrastructure proposals and bombard it with trolls.
- mschuster91 11mo ago
  > Who opposes Power lines? A LOT of politicians. Here in Germany, SüdLink got massively delayed and 8 billion euros more expensive because the back-then regional governor and edgelord Seehofer, who later rose to federal Interior Minister, caved to NIMBYs and insisted on burying the cables which is now feared to negatively impact the farmland soil [2]. > As a foreign influence I'd be delighted to target all infrastructure proposals and bombard it with trolls. That already happens. Germany's far-right AfD, that regularly protests against everything related to the adaptation of the electricity grid, has had a multitude of scandals involving Russian influence. [1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/streit-um-stromtrassen-kabinett-beschliesst-teure-erdkabel-1.2680966 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/streit-um-stromtrassen-k... [2] https://www.wochenblatt-dlv.de/feld-stall/betriebsfuehrung/erdstromkabel-landwirte-muessen-extremen-ertragseinbussen-rechnen-580824 https://www.wochenblatt-dlv.de/feld-stall/betriebsfuehrung/e...
- p_l 11mo ago
  Heard lots of grumbling from an acquaintance in Germany that a big issue is, I quote, "Bavarians not wanting either overground nor underground power lines that would bring power from north to south, so at best we sell wind power from north to west and the south of germany buys nuclear from france" ;)
  - ErikCorry 11mo ago
    It's a huge issue, see the depressing web page on Südlink. Massively delayed, much more expensive, and less efficient because it has to be underground. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suedlink https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suedlink Germany, like the UK, has dynamic national electricity pricing, which makes no sense when the interconnections are not powerful enough to actually make it a single electricity market.
    - sandos 11mo ago
      Dynamic pricing is often touted as the solution, since it will encourage both transmission and building generation where its needed the most.
    - p_l 11mo ago
      Germany is very weird in a certain way of total belief in power of free market. So you see, the market was supposed to correct that. But profit laid with cheap gas turbines to backstop wind and buying from france ;)
      - ErikCorry 11mo ago
        It's not a real free market, though, if you ignore transmission. Since transmission is a scarce resource it needs to be part of the market to send the signal to build more of it (or more battery storage, or better located production). The national auctions obscure the actual resource shortage and therefore the market can't work.
        p_l 11mo ago
- bargainbin 11mo ago
  It’s so prevalent there’s a dedicated term for people who oppose it: NIMBY. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY
  - tialaramex 11mo ago
    And at its extreme BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone It's frustratingly hard to get friends and neighbours to understand when they're part of the problem, that their "special" situation isn't special after all.
- grues-dinner 11mo ago
  People oppose everything. * Lattice overhead powerlines? Eyesore (should use the new T style ones), house values, wind noise, hums, WiFi interference, cancer, access roads, hazard to planes, birds * T-frame pylons: boring (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/13/electricity-pylons-britain-duller-place-national-grid-t-pylon-design https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/13/electr...), eyesore (we prefer the lattice ones), most of the above too * Underground: damaging to the environment, end stations are eyesores/light polluters, more construction traffic, should be HVDC not AC, house values * Solar farms: waste of good land (golf courses are fine) noise somehow, construction, eyesore (but a 400 acre field of stinky bright yellow rapeseed is OK), house values * Onshore Wind farms: all the birds all the time, access, eyesore, noise, dangerous, should be offshore, house value, waste of land, I heard on Facebook the CO2 takes 500 years to pay back * Offshore wind farms: eyesores, radar hazard, all the birds, house values somehow, navigation hazard, seabed disruption * Build an access road: destroying the countryside, dust if not surfaced, drainage, house values * Don't build an access road: destroying roads, HGVs on local roads, house values * Nuclear: literally all the reasons plus scary Some of them are fair on their own, but it really adds up to a tendentious bunch of wankers at every turn who think the house they bought for 100k in 1991 and is now worth 900k is the corner of the universe. > As a foreign influence I'm sure these people would never take foreign cash: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93k584nvgeo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93k584nvgeo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyk1j92195o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyk1j92195o
  - arethuza 11mo ago
    We can see a lot of windmills from our house - probably at least 60 in a few different windfarms. They are all nearly 40km away, but I actually like seeing them. There are others much closer, which I also rather like seeing (closest is about 2km) but you can't see them from where we live.
    - grues-dinner 11mo ago
      I also actually really like the look of wind turbines. They seems to be just the right blend of graceful, majestic and futuristic. The old 2-blade ones are a bit visually noisy as they look like they oscillate, but they're basically extinct now. I am somewhat sympathetic to, in the case of wind, low-frequency noise complaints, but I strongly suspect most of them are just tacked on for good measure.
- scrlk 11mo ago
  This has been going on for decades, e.g. 275 kV and 400 kV Supergrid construction back in the 1960s: > Supergrid planners commented that compared to the first Grid build in the 1920s and 1930s ‘we’ve been in a completely different ball game, with planning officers that want to study our proposed routes in absolute detail and then make their own suggestions’. Another engineer complained about a route near Hadrian’s wall, saying ‘It’s a good job Hadrian wasn’t around now…. He’d never get planning permission for all that’. > What price should be put on ‘amenity’? In a sense the CEGB could never do enough. This was demonstrated one November evening in 1960 when the Chairman of the CEGB, Christopher Hinton, walked into the Royal Society of Arts to give a paper on the efforts the Board was making. In his talk Hinton outlined the basic problem of NIMBYism. The power stations and transmission lines had to go somewhere. For people in the area the benefits were nil, but the immediate and visible impact of the infrastructure was considerable. Reducing the impact on amenity cost money. Underground cabling in one area would inevitably lead to the question why not do it in other areas. Hinton was not trying to win an argument. He concluded that this was a ‘problem that cannot be removed’. No precise definition or set of rules that could be called on to resolve the intractable dilemma. > The audience was in the mood for a fight. Mr Yapp of the National Parks Commission claimed that underground cabling was only more expensive than overhead lines because the Board hadn’t tried hard enough. He reasoned that the old London Electric Company had been told that a 2,000 volt underground cable was technically impossible. ‘So we go on… we are now told that 275 kV can hardly go underground’. Mr Yapp then fell into the volume fallacy. ‘I am reasonably certain that if only the cable was ordered in large lengths, it would be much cheaper’. This is the same muddled thinking that leads gas companies to claim that if only we properly commit to hydrogen, then the costs will fall. Hinton was one the country’s finest engineers. He pointed out that the laws of physics trumped the volume fallacy. ‘Overhead cable uses air, which is free, as an insulator’. https://energynetworks.substack.com/p/why-dont-we-just-put-electricity https://energynetworks.substack.com/p/why-dont-we-just-put-e...
- sapiogram 11mo ago
  In Norway, power cables have been a top-tier political issue for years. They make electricity more expensive locally, since the surplus power can be exported instead of needing to be dumped for 0 or negative cost.
  - postexitus 11mo ago
    Even without new physical cables - very recently Nordic power markets switch to Flow Based Market Coupling (FBMC) - which basically takes physical properties of the existing lines (coupling points) in grid balancing operations, which allowed some underused lines to be used more (practically) - which made electricity cheaper in some locations, and more expensive in others (because cheaper electricity flew from that region to more expensive ones). It is akin to blocking train lines to a holiday resort because poorer people will be able to access it.
- elric 11mo ago
  Same shit is happening in Belgium. We need extra transmission lines to connect the offsore wind turbines to the rest of the grid, and to improve grid stability in general, but NIMBYs have been campaigning against this for years.
- phatfish 11mo ago
  Let me introduce you to Nigel Farage.
  - lozenge 11mo ago
    It all links back to preventing renewable energy and maintaining our dependence on fossil fuel imports from autocratic nations and "big enough to lobby" O&G industry. The locals and their dislike of power lines are just convenient pawns.
- lmm 11mo ago
  I mean just read the link and they're objecting to a 120m-wide trench being dug through their countryside. Which is easy enough to sympathise with.
  - grues-dinner 11mo ago
    The consultation area is 120m wide, not necessarily the trenching. The working width is often far less than that: https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/340431/download https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/340431/download In this drawing, you can see the area in the map and it is not 120m wide along the trench: https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/357086/download https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/357086/download. For scale, the grid squares are 1000m. A 400kV trench construction swathe also includes the soil storage areas - subsoil and topsoil are separated for return afterwards, as well as clearance to the fencing (https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/357086/download https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/357086/download).
  - perilunar 11mo ago
    Why do trenches need to be dug across the countryside? Put them alongside existing roads and rail lines. Same with above-ground power lines. It might make them a bit longer, but the ‘eyesore’ is already there, and we can avoid making new ones. (Re rail lines — if you build power lines over existing rail lines you could also electrify the rail route at the same time, and get rid of the diesel locomotives).
    - grues-dinner 11mo ago
      To be fair to the National Grid there - a 400kV power line is substantial: it has to have phase separations and be buried deep enough, plus space for reactive compensation from being buried. Roads also go to places with buildings and have junctions, plumbing, foundations and are generally hard to dig past. But there are places where they do follow motorways: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M6_motorway,_northbound_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1531520.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M6_motorway,_northbo... (also canals). Rail lines go though towns by design, and as you see from comments even here, the one thing people really hate the thought of is power lines near houses.
- gadders 11mo ago
  Who do you think campaigns against power stations?
- VoodooJuJu 11mo ago
  [dead]
- Cthulhu_ 11mo ago
  I would, overhead powerlines are not something you want near any houses for various reasons. Underground is fine.
  - grues-dinner 11mo ago
    Norwich-Tilbury doesn't go near many houses at all, and certainly not 400,000 peoples' houses. Check out the route: https://norwichtotilburymap.nationalgrid.com https://norwichtotilburymap.nationalgrid.com
- 1718627440 11mo ago
  Do you want to have power lines instead of a garden?
- gambiting 11mo ago
  Oh there was this whole famous case with construction of HS2(Britain's high speed rail project) - a farmer was offered £2M(!!!) compensation for the project requiring that a single pylon was going to be constructed on his land. Outrageous, right? But get this - he successfully sued the government saying 2M is not enough, and an independent expert valued his losses due the presence of the pylon at twice that if I remember correctly - the government(the taxpayers) had to pay.
- hshdhdhehd 11mo ago
  Me. If it literally in my back yard. It's a tradegy of the commons game theory thing. I benefit from the power but please rig it somewhere else.
  - epolanski 11mo ago
    We have a similar situation in Italy with garbage. Nobody wants new waste dumps anywhere near (tens of miles) of their own houses, and each time there's an insane amount of blockades and protests. Bureaucracy gets very messy because towns and provinces and regions (equivalent to less federated us states, more or less) and the central government start having legal disputes over those things that drag decades.
    - hshdhdhehd 11mo ago
      Long term a waste dump (landfill) can be good. Cap it off and it becomes park land or sports field.
- bob1029 11mo ago
  Power lines I don't get as a NIMBY concern. The other things I can see the argument. I bought a house partially because it has direct access to a pole mounted transformer. I've had a lot of issues with last mile power delivery in residential areas that rely on buried lines and pad mounted transformers. If a transformer on a pole blows up, it can be replaced within 4 hours. Buried lines and pad mounted transformers can easily take 8+ hours due to the excavation requirement. I've had outages that lasted over 24 hours because of buried infrastructure issues. It's nice that it's all hidden until it breaks.
  - OJFord 11mo ago
    Mine's buried; was dug up and replaced overnight a few years ago. If it's slow I think that's just under-resourcing and scheduling rather than it actually taking that long to deal with the specific circumstance.
  - tstrimple 11mo ago
    I guess it depends on what the common failure mode is. During the 2020 derecho our neighborhood with buried lines was without power for roughly four hours and it's the only time our power has gone out for any significant time in the 10 years I've been here. It wasn't even our buried lines that had the problem, but the lines serving them. Places in the city with poled power delivery were down for up to two weeks. There have been multiple times where houses surrounding us are out of power but ours just keeps chugging along.
- OJFord 11mo ago
  People that like the look of the countryside without ugly infrastructure sprawling across it. https://dorset-nl.org.uk/project/undergrounding/ https://dorset-nl.org.uk/project/undergrounding/ I'm not involved or anything, but I certainly agree aesthetically. In visiting Canada it often strikes me that what ought to be beautiful landscape looks more like an industrial estate.
- mapt 11mo ago
  Always has been.
- boringg 11mo ago
  Power lines that cut over your property? I can buy that - thats a nuisance. I'm not saying I would I am saying that as a rural property owner that would be annoying.
Oarch 11mo ago
Bit of context, the gov announced a series of "anti-blocker" amendments to the planning bill last night, which is theoretically designed to address issues on large infrastructure schemes like this.
amiga386 11mo ago
This is all true, the NIMBYs are real and we must construct additional pylons... but the largest part of curtailment costs come from the UK energy sector's project mismanagement. 1. We have two undersea cable projects (EGL1&2) to provide transmission capacity between all the new windfarms in Scotland, and SE England where it's used. Both projects are years late. 2. But we keep approving and switching on more windfarms in Scotland anyway ("connect and manage" policy) 3. The bottleneck that the undersea cables aim to get around - the transmission lines between North Scotland and Northern England - are at lowered capacity because maintenance is due, and it's non-negotiable. Basically everything will be great in 2030 when every project delivers at once, but until then, enjoy exhorbitant curtailment costs. https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/transmission-network-unavailability-the-quiet-driving-force-behind-rising-curtailment-costs-in-great-britain/ https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/transmission-network-unavailability...
- bee_rider 11mo ago
  I wonder why somebody doesn’t open a datacenter in Scotland. Sounds like they have too much power… also it is a bit chilly, right?
  - citrin_ru 11mo ago
    Despite wind energy being in excess in Scotland AFIR end users are still paying very high prices due to marginal pricing used in the UK - electricity cost is set by the most expensive source of energy (even if it is 0.1% of the mix) and most of the time gas is the most expensive source. I think marginal pricing is detrimental but there is no political will to axe it.
    - rbanffy 11mo ago
      What if the datacenter buys bulk energy from a single provider and only uses the grid for excess demand? Can also go the xAI route with massive batteries smoothing out power use.
    - mapt 11mo ago
      Is there a rational reason to do that?
justincormack 11mo ago
The Green Party around there picked up a lot of ex Conservative votes and oppose the nuclear plant at Sizewell and pylons for renewables. Its a weird alliance.
- port11 11mo ago
  Eh, it explains their performance EU-wide: combine the worst of both worlds. I've mostly voted Green all my life but for the last 5 or so years I remain satisfied at their losses, as they're somehow unable to understand why people are moving away. (My comment's a little bitter, but I do hope they figure this one out.)
lumost 11mo ago
I do wonder how much nymbyism is influenced by most individuals carrying 5-10 years earnings in their home. Such a potential liability might make one awfully concerned about liabilities.
boringg 11mo ago
Wait Green Party MP - that has to be the height of idiocracy.
pancakemouse 11mo ago
> And you'd better believe wherever they buried the lines they'd have objections and expensive consultations about the disruption and the HoUsE VaLuEs caused by trenching, drilling and service structures. But those are temporary disruptions. Overground lines are permanent. The reason utilities and the Grid prefers overground is: it's cheaper. It's not better. It's cheaper. Don't blame NIMBYs for that.
jansper39 11mo ago
I live close to the route that this will be built and regularly get cheap/free energy from my energy provider, partially because I live close to the wind generation in question. People in the area will have to deal with the construction of new power lines for years, then live with having to look at them after that - at the cost of more expensive energy for the benefit of those not in the area. I'm not hugely opposed but I can see why people would be. Equally while I know burying the lines is likely more costly and damaging, the public doesn't appear to have even been consulted with different options. It seems the only option on the table is to accept the plan as it is.
ryao 11mo ago
I wonder if paying the boring company to make a tunnel for the cables would be cost effective and avoid complaints. I believe that they can bore tunnels without digging along the path on the surface.
- grues-dinner 11mo ago
  Horizontal drilling is already part of the plan in many places - Elon Musk isn't the first person to think of it. It still costs loads to do it per mile - by the looks of it you'd have six bores with three cables each (or one or two much larger bores). And a deep, concrete-sheathed cable is a huge pain to maintain compared to cables around 1-3m underground. Which is not to say they don't use TBMs - they do, but it costs a lot - this is a 200+ million project to put 3km of cables underground: https://www.nationalgrid.com/media-centre/press-releases/tunnel-boring-machine-national-grids-vip-project-eryri-set-arrive-north-wales https://www.nationalgrid.com/media-centre/press-releases/tun...

notTooFarGone 11mo ago

Who opposes Power lines? Never heard that this is a thing. As a foreign influence I'd be delighted to target all infrastructure proposals and bombard it with trolls.

mschuster91 11mo ago
> Who opposes Power lines? A LOT of politicians. Here in Germany, SüdLink got massively delayed and 8 billion euros more expensive because the back-then regional governor and edgelord Seehofer, who later rose to federal Interior Minister, caved to NIMBYs and insisted on burying the cables which is now feared to negatively impact the farmland soil [2]. > As a foreign influence I'd be delighted to target all infrastructure proposals and bombard it with trolls. That already happens. Germany's far-right AfD, that regularly protests against everything related to the adaptation of the electricity grid, has had a multitude of scandals involving Russian influence. [1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/streit-um-stromtrassen-kabinett-beschliesst-teure-erdkabel-1.2680966 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/streit-um-stromtrassen-k... [2] https://www.wochenblatt-dlv.de/feld-stall/betriebsfuehrung/erdstromkabel-landwirte-muessen-extremen-ertragseinbussen-rechnen-580824 https://www.wochenblatt-dlv.de/feld-stall/betriebsfuehrung/e...
p_l 11mo ago
Heard lots of grumbling from an acquaintance in Germany that a big issue is, I quote, "Bavarians not wanting either overground nor underground power lines that would bring power from north to south, so at best we sell wind power from north to west and the south of germany buys nuclear from france" ;)
- ErikCorry 11mo ago
  It's a huge issue, see the depressing web page on Südlink. Massively delayed, much more expensive, and less efficient because it has to be underground. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suedlink https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suedlink Germany, like the UK, has dynamic national electricity pricing, which makes no sense when the interconnections are not powerful enough to actually make it a single electricity market.
  - sandos 11mo ago
    Dynamic pricing is often touted as the solution, since it will encourage both transmission and building generation where its needed the most.
  - p_l 11mo ago
    Germany is very weird in a certain way of total belief in power of free market. So you see, the market was supposed to correct that. But profit laid with cheap gas turbines to backstop wind and buying from france ;)
    - ErikCorry 11mo ago
      It's not a real free market, though, if you ignore transmission. Since transmission is a scarce resource it needs to be part of the market to send the signal to build more of it (or more battery storage, or better located production). The national auctions obscure the actual resource shortage and therefore the market can't work.
      - p_l 11mo ago
bargainbin 11mo ago
It’s so prevalent there’s a dedicated term for people who oppose it: NIMBY. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY
- tialaramex 11mo ago
  And at its extreme BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone It's frustratingly hard to get friends and neighbours to understand when they're part of the problem, that their "special" situation isn't special after all.
grues-dinner 11mo ago
People oppose everything. * Lattice overhead powerlines? Eyesore (should use the new T style ones), house values, wind noise, hums, WiFi interference, cancer, access roads, hazard to planes, birds * T-frame pylons: boring (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/13/electricity-pylons-britain-duller-place-national-grid-t-pylon-design https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/13/electr...), eyesore (we prefer the lattice ones), most of the above too * Underground: damaging to the environment, end stations are eyesores/light polluters, more construction traffic, should be HVDC not AC, house values * Solar farms: waste of good land (golf courses are fine) noise somehow, construction, eyesore (but a 400 acre field of stinky bright yellow rapeseed is OK), house values * Onshore Wind farms: all the birds all the time, access, eyesore, noise, dangerous, should be offshore, house value, waste of land, I heard on Facebook the CO2 takes 500 years to pay back * Offshore wind farms: eyesores, radar hazard, all the birds, house values somehow, navigation hazard, seabed disruption * Build an access road: destroying the countryside, dust if not surfaced, drainage, house values * Don't build an access road: destroying roads, HGVs on local roads, house values * Nuclear: literally all the reasons plus scary Some of them are fair on their own, but it really adds up to a tendentious bunch of wankers at every turn who think the house they bought for 100k in 1991 and is now worth 900k is the corner of the universe. > As a foreign influence I'm sure these people would never take foreign cash: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93k584nvgeo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93k584nvgeo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyk1j92195o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyk1j92195o
- arethuza 11mo ago
  We can see a lot of windmills from our house - probably at least 60 in a few different windfarms. They are all nearly 40km away, but I actually like seeing them. There are others much closer, which I also rather like seeing (closest is about 2km) but you can't see them from where we live.
  - grues-dinner 11mo ago
    I also actually really like the look of wind turbines. They seems to be just the right blend of graceful, majestic and futuristic. The old 2-blade ones are a bit visually noisy as they look like they oscillate, but they're basically extinct now. I am somewhat sympathetic to, in the case of wind, low-frequency noise complaints, but I strongly suspect most of them are just tacked on for good measure.
scrlk 11mo ago
This has been going on for decades, e.g. 275 kV and 400 kV Supergrid construction back in the 1960s: > Supergrid planners commented that compared to the first Grid build in the 1920s and 1930s ‘we’ve been in a completely different ball game, with planning officers that want to study our proposed routes in absolute detail and then make their own suggestions’. Another engineer complained about a route near Hadrian’s wall, saying ‘It’s a good job Hadrian wasn’t around now…. He’d never get planning permission for all that’. > What price should be put on ‘amenity’? In a sense the CEGB could never do enough. This was demonstrated one November evening in 1960 when the Chairman of the CEGB, Christopher Hinton, walked into the Royal Society of Arts to give a paper on the efforts the Board was making. In his talk Hinton outlined the basic problem of NIMBYism. The power stations and transmission lines had to go somewhere. For people in the area the benefits were nil, but the immediate and visible impact of the infrastructure was considerable. Reducing the impact on amenity cost money. Underground cabling in one area would inevitably lead to the question why not do it in other areas. Hinton was not trying to win an argument. He concluded that this was a ‘problem that cannot be removed’. No precise definition or set of rules that could be called on to resolve the intractable dilemma. > The audience was in the mood for a fight. Mr Yapp of the National Parks Commission claimed that underground cabling was only more expensive than overhead lines because the Board hadn’t tried hard enough. He reasoned that the old London Electric Company had been told that a 2,000 volt underground cable was technically impossible. ‘So we go on… we are now told that 275 kV can hardly go underground’. Mr Yapp then fell into the volume fallacy. ‘I am reasonably certain that if only the cable was ordered in large lengths, it would be much cheaper’. This is the same muddled thinking that leads gas companies to claim that if only we properly commit to hydrogen, then the costs will fall. Hinton was one the country’s finest engineers. He pointed out that the laws of physics trumped the volume fallacy. ‘Overhead cable uses air, which is free, as an insulator’. https://energynetworks.substack.com/p/why-dont-we-just-put-electricity https://energynetworks.substack.com/p/why-dont-we-just-put-e...
sapiogram 11mo ago
In Norway, power cables have been a top-tier political issue for years. They make electricity more expensive locally, since the surplus power can be exported instead of needing to be dumped for 0 or negative cost.
- postexitus 11mo ago
  Even without new physical cables - very recently Nordic power markets switch to Flow Based Market Coupling (FBMC) - which basically takes physical properties of the existing lines (coupling points) in grid balancing operations, which allowed some underused lines to be used more (practically) - which made electricity cheaper in some locations, and more expensive in others (because cheaper electricity flew from that region to more expensive ones). It is akin to blocking train lines to a holiday resort because poorer people will be able to access it.
elric 11mo ago
Same shit is happening in Belgium. We need extra transmission lines to connect the offsore wind turbines to the rest of the grid, and to improve grid stability in general, but NIMBYs have been campaigning against this for years.
phatfish 11mo ago
Let me introduce you to Nigel Farage.
- lozenge 11mo ago
  It all links back to preventing renewable energy and maintaining our dependence on fossil fuel imports from autocratic nations and "big enough to lobby" O&G industry. The locals and their dislike of power lines are just convenient pawns.
lmm 11mo ago
I mean just read the link and they're objecting to a 120m-wide trench being dug through their countryside. Which is easy enough to sympathise with.
- grues-dinner 11mo ago
  The consultation area is 120m wide, not necessarily the trenching. The working width is often far less than that: https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/340431/download https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/340431/download In this drawing, you can see the area in the map and it is not 120m wide along the trench: https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/357086/download https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/357086/download. For scale, the grid squares are 1000m. A 400kV trench construction swathe also includes the soil storage areas - subsoil and topsoil are separated for return afterwards, as well as clearance to the fencing (https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/357086/download https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/357086/download).
- perilunar 11mo ago
  Why do trenches need to be dug across the countryside? Put them alongside existing roads and rail lines. Same with above-ground power lines. It might make them a bit longer, but the ‘eyesore’ is already there, and we can avoid making new ones. (Re rail lines — if you build power lines over existing rail lines you could also electrify the rail route at the same time, and get rid of the diesel locomotives).
  - grues-dinner 11mo ago
    To be fair to the National Grid there - a 400kV power line is substantial: it has to have phase separations and be buried deep enough, plus space for reactive compensation from being buried. Roads also go to places with buildings and have junctions, plumbing, foundations and are generally hard to dig past. But there are places where they do follow motorways: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M6_motorway,_northbound_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1531520.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M6_motorway,_northbo... (also canals). Rail lines go though towns by design, and as you see from comments even here, the one thing people really hate the thought of is power lines near houses.
gadders 11mo ago
Who do you think campaigns against power stations?
VoodooJuJu 11mo ago
[dead]
Cthulhu_ 11mo ago
I would, overhead powerlines are not something you want near any houses for various reasons. Underground is fine.
- grues-dinner 11mo ago
  Norwich-Tilbury doesn't go near many houses at all, and certainly not 400,000 peoples' houses. Check out the route: https://norwichtotilburymap.nationalgrid.com https://norwichtotilburymap.nationalgrid.com
1718627440 11mo ago
Do you want to have power lines instead of a garden?
gambiting 11mo ago
Oh there was this whole famous case with construction of HS2(Britain's high speed rail project) - a farmer was offered £2M(!!!) compensation for the project requiring that a single pylon was going to be constructed on his land. Outrageous, right? But get this - he successfully sued the government saying 2M is not enough, and an independent expert valued his losses due the presence of the pylon at twice that if I remember correctly - the government(the taxpayers) had to pay.
hshdhdhehd 11mo ago
Me. If it literally in my back yard. It's a tradegy of the commons game theory thing. I benefit from the power but please rig it somewhere else.
- epolanski 11mo ago
  We have a similar situation in Italy with garbage. Nobody wants new waste dumps anywhere near (tens of miles) of their own houses, and each time there's an insane amount of blockades and protests. Bureaucracy gets very messy because towns and provinces and regions (equivalent to less federated us states, more or less) and the central government start having legal disputes over those things that drag decades.
  - hshdhdhehd 11mo ago
    Long term a waste dump (landfill) can be good. Cap it off and it becomes park land or sports field.
bob1029 11mo ago
Power lines I don't get as a NIMBY concern. The other things I can see the argument. I bought a house partially because it has direct access to a pole mounted transformer. I've had a lot of issues with last mile power delivery in residential areas that rely on buried lines and pad mounted transformers. If a transformer on a pole blows up, it can be replaced within 4 hours. Buried lines and pad mounted transformers can easily take 8+ hours due to the excavation requirement. I've had outages that lasted over 24 hours because of buried infrastructure issues. It's nice that it's all hidden until it breaks.
- OJFord 11mo ago
  Mine's buried; was dug up and replaced overnight a few years ago. If it's slow I think that's just under-resourcing and scheduling rather than it actually taking that long to deal with the specific circumstance.
- tstrimple 11mo ago
  I guess it depends on what the common failure mode is. During the 2020 derecho our neighborhood with buried lines was without power for roughly four hours and it's the only time our power has gone out for any significant time in the 10 years I've been here. It wasn't even our buried lines that had the problem, but the lines serving them. Places in the city with poled power delivery were down for up to two weeks. There have been multiple times where houses surrounding us are out of power but ours just keeps chugging along.
OJFord 11mo ago
People that like the look of the countryside without ugly infrastructure sprawling across it. https://dorset-nl.org.uk/project/undergrounding/ https://dorset-nl.org.uk/project/undergrounding/ I'm not involved or anything, but I certainly agree aesthetically. In visiting Canada it often strikes me that what ought to be beautiful landscape looks more like an industrial estate.
mapt 11mo ago
Always has been.
boringg 11mo ago
Power lines that cut over your property? I can buy that - thats a nuisance. I'm not saying I would I am saying that as a rural property owner that would be annoying.

Oarch 11mo ago

Bit of context, the gov announced a series of "anti-blocker" amendments to the planning bill last night, which is theoretically designed to address issues on large infrastructure schemes like this.

amiga386 11mo ago

This is all true, the NIMBYs are real and we must construct additional pylons... but the largest part of curtailment costs come from the UK energy sector's project mismanagement. 1. We have two undersea cable projects (EGL1&2) to provide transmission capacity between all the new windfarms in Scotland, and SE England where it's used. Both projects are years late. 2. But we keep approving and switching on more windfarms in Scotland anyway ("connect and manage" policy) 3. The bottleneck that the undersea cables aim to get around - the transmission lines between North Scotland and Northern England - are at lowered capacity because maintenance is due, and it's non-negotiable. Basically everything will be great in 2030 when every project delivers at once, but until then, enjoy exhorbitant curtailment costs. https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/transmission-network-unavailability-the-quiet-driving-force-behind-rising-curtailment-costs-in-great-britain/ https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/transmission-network-unavailability...

bee_rider 11mo ago
I wonder why somebody doesn’t open a datacenter in Scotland. Sounds like they have too much power… also it is a bit chilly, right?
- citrin_ru 11mo ago
  Despite wind energy being in excess in Scotland AFIR end users are still paying very high prices due to marginal pricing used in the UK - electricity cost is set by the most expensive source of energy (even if it is 0.1% of the mix) and most of the time gas is the most expensive source. I think marginal pricing is detrimental but there is no political will to axe it.
  - rbanffy 11mo ago
    What if the datacenter buys bulk energy from a single provider and only uses the grid for excess demand? Can also go the xAI route with massive batteries smoothing out power use.
  - mapt 11mo ago
    Is there a rational reason to do that?

justincormack 11mo ago

The Green Party around there picked up a lot of ex Conservative votes and oppose the nuclear plant at Sizewell and pylons for renewables. Its a weird alliance.

port11 11mo ago
Eh, it explains their performance EU-wide: combine the worst of both worlds. I've mostly voted Green all my life but for the last 5 or so years I remain satisfied at their losses, as they're somehow unable to understand why people are moving away. (My comment's a little bitter, but I do hope they figure this one out.)

lumost 11mo ago

I do wonder how much nymbyism is influenced by most individuals carrying 5-10 years earnings in their home. Such a potential liability might make one awfully concerned about liabilities.

boringg 11mo ago

Wait Green Party MP - that has to be the height of idiocracy.

pancakemouse 11mo ago

> And you'd better believe wherever they buried the lines they'd have objections and expensive consultations about the disruption and the HoUsE VaLuEs caused by trenching, drilling and service structures. But those are temporary disruptions. Overground lines are permanent. The reason utilities and the Grid prefers overground is: it's cheaper. It's not better. It's cheaper. Don't blame NIMBYs for that.

jansper39 11mo ago

I live close to the route that this will be built and regularly get cheap/free energy from my energy provider, partially because I live close to the wind generation in question. People in the area will have to deal with the construction of new power lines for years, then live with having to look at them after that - at the cost of more expensive energy for the benefit of those not in the area. I'm not hugely opposed but I can see why people would be. Equally while I know burying the lines is likely more costly and damaging, the public doesn't appear to have even been consulted with different options. It seems the only option on the table is to accept the plan as it is.

ryao 11mo ago

I wonder if paying the boring company to make a tunnel for the cables would be cost effective and avoid complaints. I believe that they can bore tunnels without digging along the path on the surface.

grues-dinner 11mo ago
Horizontal drilling is already part of the plan in many places - Elon Musk isn't the first person to think of it. It still costs loads to do it per mile - by the looks of it you'd have six bores with three cables each (or one or two much larger bores). And a deep, concrete-sheathed cable is a huge pain to maintain compared to cables around 1-3m underground. Which is not to say they don't use TBMs - they do, but it costs a lot - this is a 200+ million project to put 3km of cables underground: https://www.nationalgrid.com/media-centre/press-releases/tunnel-boring-machine-national-grids-vip-project-eryri-set-arrive-north-wales https://www.nationalgrid.com/media-centre/press-releases/tun...