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New style of UK electricity pylon launches New style of UK electricity pylon launches
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A striking new style of electricity pylon, designed to have less impact on landscapes, can be seen in the countryside for first time. They’ve marched tirelessly across the country for the last century, a 90,000-strong army of steel sentinels carrying electricity across hill and vale, gracefully suspended from their spindly frames. But now, the classic British pylon is facing extinction, thanks to a newcomer on the block: the whiter-than-white T-pylon, unveiled this week by the National Grid.
National Grid has begun construction of a line of the new high-voltage T-pylons, which at 35 metres (115 ft) are up to a third lower in height than the traditional steel lattice pylons, at the company’s Eakring training academy in Nottinghamshire. Designed by the Danish architecture and engineering firm Bystrup, the new pylon looks a bit like a ski lift mast adorned with two dangly diamond earrings, which hold three cables either side of the central pole.
The pylon, designed by Danish architects and engineering company Bystrup, was the winner of an international competition in 2011 to find a 21st-century design for carrying high-voltage overhead lines. Its creators say it is designed to have a reduced visual impact on the landscape: it has a smaller footprint than the traditional steel lattice pylon and is about a third lower in height than its skeletal forebears. It is also quicker to build. Prefabricated in bolt-together sections, it can be assembled by a team of five people in a day, compared with the nine people working for five days required for the original design.
Its innovative but simple layout gives it a T-shaped cross arm, with the electricity wires and the insulators which hold them in place arranged in a diamond “earring” shape. Six of the new pylons have been erected at the National Grid’s training academy in Eakring, Nottinghamshire, each demonstrating a different function in the network – including the thrillingly named “F10 flying angle suspension pylon”, which can allow a turn of up to 10 degrees along the route.
“Our aim was to minimise visual impact and create a design that could adapt well to the English landscape,” said Brian Endahl, project manager at Bystrup, which won the project in a competition in 2011, beating rival designs based on everything from boomerangs to giant insects.
“We have built similar pylons in Denmark and found that the monopole structure works well in hilly areas as it requires less space and can follow the contours of the land.”
David Wright, director of electricity transmission asset management at the National Grid, said the new design was not intended as a replacement for the lattice pylon. “But it’s a new option and in some landscapes its shorter height and sleeker appearance can offer advantages,” he added.
The lattice pylon dates back to 1928, when the stridently anti-modern architect Reginald Blomfield selected a design by the American Milliken Brothers, which drew on classical proportions.
Blomfield chose the name “pylon” as a reference to the tapering gateways of ancient Egyptian temples, through which the energy of the human spirit was thought to pass into the afterlife, in an attempt to make the imposition of brute infrastructure more palatable.
But the first pylons sparked a backlash and were denounced in a letter to the Times signed by innumerable worthies, including Rudyard Kipling and John Maynard Keynes.
“In most people’s minds those pylons are still associated with the old industrial age of fossil fuels and pollution,” Endahl said. “With the move to renewables, we wanted our design to reflect the new era of clean energy.”
The T-pylon has the same wipe-clean white goods aesthetic as a wind turbine and, although it may be more compact than lattice pylons, it seems more chunky and clunky. The dark grey latticework structures dissolve into the background more than these fat white poles could ever do.
And for all the talk of being green, there’s a good deal more steel in the new design than in Blomfield’s wraith-like frames, which may soon go the same way as their gasometer cousins and become defunct relics of a bygone age.
Related: The winner of a new generation of electricity pylons is announcedRelated: The winner of a new generation of electricity pylons is announced
The training line of six pylons being constructed will include all five of the family of T-pylons, which each have a different function in the transmission network.
They include a standard suspension pylon to carry the cables in a straight line, pylons which can allow a turn in the route and terminal pylons which end a line at a substation or take the cables underground.
Since the T-pylon won the competition, National Grid has been working with engineers and partners to turn it into a reality and ensure it can cope with potential stresses, such as high winds and the extra weight of ice on the cables in extremely cold weather.
David Wright, director of electricity transmission asset management at National Grid, said: “We’ve been able to answer yes to the hundreds of questions that need to be asked before we can introduce a new type of pylon.
“The training line has enabled us to learn many lessons about how to manufacture and build the T-pylon.”
He said: “We developed the new style of pylon so that we could have a 21st-century design to offer as we plan new transmission routes.
“The T-pylon is not a replacement for the steel lattice pylon but it’s a new option and in some landscapes its shorter height and sleeker appearance can offer real advantages.”