When network reinforcement gets personal…Part 2

T-pylons all around

The Hinkley C connection project is not only important to me from a professional point of view (as I discussed in my last article), but it has been part of my day to day life as a local living near the development. I live in Nailsea in North Somerset, and the route of the new 400kV line runs past the western edge of my town. Nearly everywhere I travel locally gives me sight of one or more of the T-pylons. With much of the route of the T-pylons running over the very flat Somerset Levels, the white towers are visible from far and wide.

And it’s not just the T-pylons that I encounter. If I take a cycle ride down the Strawberry Line (a disused railway repurposed as a lovely cycle route), it takes me close to the site of where the new Sandford GSP is being built. On my way down the M5, I’ve been able to watch the progress of the 400kV cable termination compound next to the motorway (and of course taken the opportunity to explain it to my children!), as well as seeing the installation of the cables through the Mendip Hills.

When I travel down the A39 to visit relatives in Minehead, the Hinkley C construction site itself is visible from many angles, and at night the underlit cranes looks like an ethereal metal forest. My son is at agricultural college in Cannington (near Hinkley Point), and you can’t be there for more than 5 minutes without sight of another of the white Hinkley park and ride buses shuttling the workforce to and fro.

Reactions

I am known to my friends as someone whose job is something to do with the electricity network, and as such have frequently been asked questions (or been given opinions) relating to the works.

The work associated with the undergrounding of the 132kV lines around the west of Nailsea was met with general agreement, but prompted questions. “Why are they taking this bit down?” “Why are they digging up my road?” “Can’t they just put everything underground?”

That last question is one that never goes away. It seems to be the case that there is a general view that overhead lines are old technology, and that underground cables are new technology, and network companies only install overhead lines because they’re worried about profits. That’s not entirely untrue, of course, but there are many technical and practical reasons for installing overhead lines instead of underground cables. But it’s very difficult to shift these sort of ingrained opinions.

But one interesting response in relation to the overhead lines I heard only a few weeks ago. For the first few weeks after the T-pylons went up, the person said that it was all they could see. They were new (and bright white) and didn’t blend in. But after a few weeks, they became just part of the background. It seems that people are good at getting used to things quite quickly.

Never neutral

Having been involved professionally in the development of the Hinkley Connection Project, and having seen it installed in my ‘back garden’, I’ve come to appreciate that new energy infrastructure is never neutral. It might be objectively or subjectively good or bad (or both), it might be beneficial or damaging (or both), but it’s never neutral.

This is certainly true from an engineering point of view. National Grid did a lot of electrical design work to show that the network needed these new circuits in order to accommodate Hinkley C. From an electrical point of view, these circuits are a positive and beneficial addition to our interconnected transmission network.

So is the Hinkley Connection Project positive or negative from other points of view? In terms of economics, you could look at it from a simple cost efficiency point of view. Does the outturn cost (whatever that happens to be) represent good value for money for what was delivered? At some point we’ll maybe see the final cost, but it’s almost certainly going to be more than the ￡655m funding that was awarded. From a wider economic perspective, was this the best place to spend that much money? Invariably this project can’t be separated from Hinkley C itself, so does the combination of the cost of HPC (now estimated to be around ￡33bn, up from ￡16bn in 2012) plus the new 400kV line represent the best way to spend that money? I’ve got no doubt that there will be many views on both sides of the debate.

In terms of the environmental impact, I’m certainly not qualified to give an objective answer. But any answer would need to take into account immediate impacts on flora and fauna, embedded carbon emissions from the work, as well as a view as to how the new circuit facilitates the objectives of reaching net zero on the electricity network. Not easy questions to answer.

When it comes to visual impact, there are almost certainly winners and losers. Some of the houses around the west of Nailsea, for example, have had the 132kV overhead lines over their gardens removed, a significant improvement. But others will now have a 400kV transmission line close to their house, despite the efforts to route the line away from housing.

New transmission infrastructure

When we read about the new transmission infrastructure required over the next 10-15 years to deliver net zero, we can’t be neutral about it. Every new item of infrastructure exacts a price on the environment, whether it’s a view, or construction traffic, or noise, or embedded carbon. Every new scheme has an economic cost and an opportunity to spend the money elsewhere. Every new circuit electrically benefits the network in one part of the country at the expense of another.

I’m not saying it’s not right to do transmission reinforcement work (I am an electrical engineer, after all!). There are multiple reasons for moving to a low carbon energy supply, with the knock-on implications of transmission reinforcement. But I am saying that we need to think about this as more than lines on a map and numbers on a graph. Ask the difficult questions – do we really need this particular scheme? Is another scheme better? Is it worth spending more money to develop something that has less impact on local people or the environment? What are we aiming for overall? This sounds like the job for a system architect, ideally separate from the day to day operation of the network, to have the remit to step back and to ask and answer these difficult questions.

Just think, energy projects and network reinforcement will always get personal for someone, and one day it might be you. We have a responsibility, a duty, to change the energy system for everyone in the country, not just for the benefit of energy professionals like ourselves.