[grues-dinner]

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-....

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-Counc...

[amiga386]

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...

[londons_explore]

The solution to NIMBY's seems simple... "We would like to put a power line through your village. Here are the plans. We will to give every resident £400 to compensate them for the trouble, and it will only happen if at least half the residents vote yes. If the plan goes ahead, all voters will be eligible for the £400, even if you vote no.".

It turns out most people don't really care about a power line, but do like money. You won't have to offer much money to have a majority saying yes.

[hylaride]

IMO, it should be "if village votes no, they're top of the list for brownouts/blackouts".

NIMBYism is 99% wealthier people pushing the costs (visually or literally) of modern society onto others instead of bearing it themselves.

[amiga386]

The government were mooting "we'll give you free electricity for life if you let us build the pylons near you" in 2024

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-government-electricity-py...

It's currently "we'll give you £250 off your bill per year, for 10 years, if you let us build the pylons near you" (the average bill is currently £880 per year)

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/households-near-new-pylon...

[pjc50]

Yeah. I especially think this should be linked explicitly to power bills. Vote no and get a 10% increase on your bill for "supplying electricity through wishful thinking rather than pylons".

Localized ballot initiatives are basically unheard of in the UK, though. Everything is routed through central government and its press officers.

[syrgian]

Wouldn't all the houses in the village lose way more than £400 in value?

Last I was comparing houses in a neighborhood, the houses near a powerline were consistently worth 15k-30k less (3-6% less).

[amiga386]

Yes, but you have to factor in that you can't eat houses.

Being given money immediately for your living costs might be more attractive to you, than trying to retain value in an asset you'll only realise in 20 years time when you sell it, or perhaps not at all if you die first.

[ErikCorry]

It's easy to blame project mismanagement, when it was always well known that undersea cables are much more expensive and difficult than the on-land cables that the Nimbies scuppered.

And it's unsurprising that windfarms in Scotland keep getting planned when the operator can collect these payments while switching off their turbines to reduce wear and tear.

[amiga386]

EGL2 was proposed in 2015 and was meant to be operational by 2023. It wasn't even approved until August 2024. Construction began a month later.

EGL1 has already suffered a 16 month delay thanks to its constructors: https://www.offshore-energy.biz/supply-chain-constraints-pus...

> The partners attribute the delay to market conditions, supplier withdrawals, and a delayed final offer from an unnamed supplier, asserting they took all reasonable steps to secure the supply chain given the challenging circumstances.

We can certainly "what if" with NIMBYs pylon-blocking, but I'd still say it's mismanagement of the EGL, either by the government, Ofgem or the constructors, that have led to these delays. If these delays hadn't happened, we'd have EGL2 available today and the maintenance on old pylons would have less of an effect.

It's actually good news that there's so much interest in investing in wind farms! Scottish windfarm companies do have to bid at auction to be permitted to build, it's ultimately up to the government what bids they accept. The Tories fucked up and set too low a price, no investors were interested - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66749344 - their successors aren't making the same mistake: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly8ynegwn4o

[ErikCorry]

If EGL2 took 9 years to get approval, that's the fault of the Nimbies, right?

[amiga386]

The project was proposed in 2015 but it didn't seriously start until 2020. That's purely politics.

I'd say the lion's share of time was spent seeking planning permission, writing environmental impact documents, planning the route, building the justification for any compulsory purchases, consulting with interest parties, etc. Some of that would be NIMBYs, but I don't think there was a sustained campaign to hold back EGL2, it just took a lot of bureaucracy, and effectively "death by a thousand cuts". A project gets to be 5 years late one day at a time.

See the timeline and some of the documents here: https://www.easterngreenlink2.co.uk/project-to-date

[ErikCorry]

I guess I'm using 'Nimby' in the wider sense to include all the red tape that slows down or blocks every building project in the UK. A project doesn't have to be individually targeted by Nimbies to be slowed down, they have enough regulatory quicksand to stop building wholesale. Then when you get through that, they can target your individual project.

And Nimby is politics, so I don't see a distinction between Nimby and 'purely politics'.

[bee_rider]

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]

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.

[MagnumOpus]

“Marginal pricing” is just how a market economy works.

If there weren’t marginal pricing, nobody in the private industry would build more wind farms or submarine power lines or battery capacity - which are lucrative because they produce peak-time power cheaper than imported gas — and these are the things that will drive power prices down eventually.

[bee_rider]

It sounds like there’s some sort of rule in the UK where al of the suppliers have to charge the same price per watt (or something), and they’ve named this rule “marginal pricing”? So, it is not entirely the same as a market based pricing.

Whether it is better or not, I have no idea. One could probably see an argument for allowing renewables to price themselves below the sustainable rate for petrochemical based fuels—let them outcompete based on price. Of course that gives them less money to reinvest.

On the other hand, power grids are never entirely market based; the grid needs some dispatchable power for stability sake, and it is hard to get consumers to express their tolerance of power outages in terms of how much extra they’ll pay to keep unused plants in reserve…

[aregue]

One solution is to have several markets. Norway also has transmission problems. The land is divided into 5 areas, each with its own price.

[rbanffy]

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]

Is there a rational reason to do that?

[shawabawa3]

The idea behind it is that everyone who supplies energy gets paid the same

E.g. it would be unfair to pay wind farms 10p/kWh and gas turbines 20p/kWh when the electricity they supply is the same and fungible

If there was enough grid storage this wouldn't be an issue, but because there isn't, there are always times where we need gas turbines to top up and those turbines won't turn on for less than it costs them, which is a lot

The upside of this is renewables are very profitable and incentivised

[mapt]

If that's the case, doesn't it make a huge amount of sense for the utility to tell the silk incinerator selling it 0.001% of its electricity for 40p/kwh, "Bugger off, we'll buy batteries"? Cutting its overall power costs in half for a tiny operational shift.

You don't actually need the 0.1%. There are easy ways to make it up. There AREN'T easy ways to make up 7%, though.

[bee_rider]

It is nice that is keeps renewables extra profitable, but if they could price down a bit they could just run fossil fuels out of the market entirely… so, it doesn’t seem like a great favor to them.

OTOH treating all units of energy “fairly” ignores the added value of dispatchable generation, so it doesn’t really seem fair at all.

On the gripping hand, if pricing was set by the market, customers could be incentivized to help fix the intermittence problem by making their loads dispatchable, which seems like it would be an all-around win…

[infthi]

>it would be unfair to pay wind farms 10p/kWh and gas turbines 20p/kWh when the electricity they supply is the same and fungible It is not the same, supply from gas turbines is more flexible/predictable, this might be worth an extra premium.

[vidarh]

What makes you think they haven't? At least half a dozen operators have more than one data centre in Scotland, and many more have one.

[ErikCorry]

Are you sure?

> Despite campaigning for more data center development two years ago, not much has come to fruition in Scotland. In December of 2021, Oracle closed the Sun Microsystems data center in Linlithgow, Scotland. DataVita has opened a new data center in Glasgow in its parent company’s office development, as well as expanding its Fortis data center in August 2022. No major construction projects have been announced since the campaign began. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/scotland-continue...

Why would you open a datacenter in Scotland when the UK rules mean the electricity price is the same throughout the UK, regardless of supply and demand? This is precisely the issue that OP highlights - the UK electricity auction is at a national level, but transmission is limited and the actual supply and demand is not evenly distributed, causing huge curtailment payments to have to be made.

[vidarh]

About the number of data centres in Scotland? Yes, I am sure. I have done business with operators of several of them.

You'd open them because of plenty of customer demand.

[amiga386]

According to an article today, there are 16 data centres in Scotland

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c77zxx43x4vo

[api]

Chilly is good. A lot of DC power is cooling.

I don’t know why Northern Canada is not full of data centers. There’s untapped hydroelectric potential up there as well as free cooling.

If Russia wasn’t a basketcase politically Siberia would be great too.

[bee_rider]

Agreed! That was what I meant, sorry for any ambiguity.

[blitzar]

Plumb in some district heating and everyone wins.

[sameesh]

spawn more overlords!

[notTooFarGone]

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.

[grues-dinner]

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/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/clyk1j92195o

[arethuza]

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.

[grumpy-de-sre]

Yeh I'm about 2km from a large wind park, it's the least obnoxious thing imaginable. Jogging through them at night with their dim red blinking strobes or watching them work overtime on a windy winter day is great and gives you a sorely needed feeling of optimism and hope for the future.

Yes directly underneath them there is some gentle swooshing noises but I think beyond 500m it's basically imperceptible. Nothing I'd call offensive, car traffic is easily 10x worse.

The young folks that I've talked to locally, overwhelming share the same perspective.

The opposition has to come from folks who cannot see the bigger picture and just view them as some kind of excessive ugly infrastructure. Not properly recognizing / or caring about the societal benefit of clean abundant energy or the future.

I kind of find it interesting that a lot of historical landscape art from northern Europe featured windmills. Nobody viewed them as a blight back then.

[gambiting]

I live about a mile down from two large wind turbines and you can absolutely hear them, especially at night - it's a low droning noise that especially on quiet nights and in the summer when you have your windows open it actually bothers me to a point where I considered selling the house multple times already - but decided that rolling the dice on noise pollution and ending up with something even more annoying just isn't worth it.

>>Not properly recognizing / or caring about the societal benefit of clean abundant energy or the future.

I think we should devote every single spare inch of land to wind turbines and harness as much of wind energy as possible. But I won't pretend like the bloody things are not keeping me up at night when I can hear them.

[grumpy-de-sre]

I'm assuming it depends a fair bit on the model of the turbine. The park near us is rather new so I'm sure they are using the latest options.

[zerkten]

>> feeling of optimism and hope for the future.

I thought I was strange for feeling this when I brought my US-raised kids back to Northern Ireland this spring. Some would have been visible from my childhood home had they been built earlier. It made me think that maybe these people can get something right for the future.

[grumpy-de-sre]

For some more hope [1][2].

Times are tumultuous but potential exists all around us.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g80av4zlDco

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUVoWxvvJ5Y

[UltraSane]

There are a LOT of wind turbines in the US.

[bee_rider]

I can’t stand the fact that we put everything to committee when we’re trying to do something good, but not otherwise. I live near a highway, I can hear the cars all day, where’s my veto? I’ve lived near trains—but they were freight trains, so I didn’t get the “public transit is helpful for the little people” veto, I guess.

It’s like we can only accomplish anything as a society if if the fact that it is going to piss people off is baked in.

[grumpy-de-sre]

I feel like a lot of our (EU) legal structures are totally inadequate for long term periods of peace. Eventually everything gets bloated and ossified and vested interests gain more and more influence/control.

Existential threats always seem to have an interesting way of unlocking progress.

Just look at how quickly Germany was able to build the north sea LNG terminals in the face of the russian gas crisis [1].

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7u4rhjVJoI

[MalcolmDwyer]

> The young folks that I've talked to...

Meanwhile the older folks are still freaked out from when they watched "The Tripods" in the 80's and can't abide big mechanical monsters looming nearby.

[grues-dinner]

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.

[rwyinuse]

Yeah, I get why people don't want wind turbines right next to their house, but also in my country I see people in the countryside complaining about turbines that are literally in middle of a forest, many kilometers away. It's just pathetic, especially since we're talking about economic backwater, where tax revenue and jobs from those turbines are a significant plus.

[Loughla]

I don't mind them in the distance. I would love if these stupid things were 40km away. The closest is like 500 meters away from my house.

They're awful.

I live in the country for the peace and quiet and dark at night.

Now with a wind farm, there is a constant background hum that reminds me of living near a highway in the city, and a swishing noise that's louder than the cicadas and other night time bugs. Also, the red blinking safety lights do actually keep me up at night, but I might just be very sensitive to light.

I fully supported and still support the wind farm, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to host a turbine (and therefore benefit at all from these things). But, I really, really, really don't like the side effects at all.

Is that NIMBYism?

[lillecarl]

500 meters is very close, if it ACTUALLY affects you negatively I'd say your concerns are valid, but at 2km it's only going to be the skyline, which isn't your property unless you're in NYC.

[tpxl]

> Is that NIMBYism?

No. You recognize the drawbacks and still support the project for the good of others. That's the opposite of NIMBY, it's a high level of emotional maturity.

[bee_rider]

I live in the country near a highway, if we could ban anything louder than a cicada I’d be quite happy to save us all a lot of fossil fuels!

[Forgeties79]

Saw multiple people on HN literally 2 days ago complaining about how noisy solar is. Absolutely baffling.

[gambiting]

What's noisy about them? The transformers? Or something else?

[Forgeties79]

Yeah they claimed the associated hardware for it was noisy. I don’t want to link to the actual comments because that’s kind of mean spirited, I’m just pointing out that I’ve heard people complain about the noise from solar and it’s pretty wild to me. I’ve been in close proximity to pretty large arrays and in plenty of homes with them on rooftops. You don’t notice them at all. They also don’t make the air around them unbreathable

[throwaway34564]

I have a residential solar installation, and the inverter makes some noise when the relays are switching between import and export. I'm not complaining - although it was indeed surprising

[flerchin]

> tendentious bunch of wankers

Lovely turn of phrase. I'm going to work it into my next tech talk.

[myrmidon]

There is no need to speculate on Reform members being on the take when they are literally pleading "guilty" in court: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj6xwy015ngo

Scum.

[ElevenLathe]

I assume from context that the "house values" you and several other apparently British posters are using is what in the US we would call "home prices"? Or have I guessed wrong and it is being used more like "family values"? If the latter, what kind of values are meant?

[port11]

It's home prices indeed AFAICT. It's fairly bloody-minded ti think house prices will go down with nearby renewables, it'd be a small blip if any at all. Give me wind turbines around and take away the cars and delivery motorcycles.

[HPsquared]

House prices are the UK's version of "the spice must flow". The whole Ponzi scheme is dependent on that market, as there isn't much else. Too big to fail.

[devnullbrain]

Specifically, concern for house prices in a really myopic way. It's 'preferable' to hamstring the place you live in than to turn it into somewhere with a functioning economy that people want to live in.

[array_key_first]

If it makes you feel better, it's the same in the US. Some cities self destruct in pursuit of maintaining real estate prices. Of course, once they self destruct, prices plummet. Nobody considers that part.

[vlan0]

The problem is, and always has been, land owners and their ego.

[scrlk]

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-e...

[mschuster91]

> 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-k...

[2] https://www.wochenblatt-dlv.de/feld-stall/betriebsfuehrung/e...

[sapiogram]

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]

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.

[p_l]

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]

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

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.

[p_l]

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]

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]

sshhhh, you're breaking the perfect invisible hand of market Germany wants to dogmatically push in EU grid

The mandatory EDI platform to interact on German market is also a bit annoying, though it's in details theory is theoretically /s solid

[sandos]

Dynamic pricing is often touted as the solution, since it will encourage both transmission and building generation where its needed the most.

[bargainbin]

It’s so prevalent there’s a dedicated term for people who oppose it: NIMBY.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY

[tialaramex]

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.

[gambiting]

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.

[bob1029]

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.

[tstrimple]

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]

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.

[OJFord]

People that like the look of the countryside without ugly infrastructure sprawling across it.

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.

[elric]

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.

[boringg]

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.

[hshdhdhehd]

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]

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]

Long term a waste dump (landfill) can be good. Cap it off and it becomes park land or sports field.

[Cthulhu_]

I would, overhead powerlines are not something you want near any houses for various reasons. Underground is fine.

[grues-dinner]

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

[gadders]

Who do you think campaigns against power stations?

[mapt]

Always has been.

[1718627440]

Do you want to have power lines instead of a garden?

[lmm]

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]

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

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. 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).

[perilunar]

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]

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,_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.

[ripley12]

120m would be an absolutely insane width for a trench. It seems more likely that you’ve misinterpreted that.

[phatfish]

Let me introduce you to Nigel Farage.

[lozenge]

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.

[Oarch]

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.

[lumost]

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.

[justincormack]

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]

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.)

[ryao]

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]

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/tun...

[jansper39]

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.

[boringg]

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

[pancakemouse]

> 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.