Tag: Pylons

If Climate Change is Knocking Down Power Pylons, Why Build More Renewables?

If storms are getting worse, how can fragile renewable energy infrastructure survive the superstorms of the future?

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

If storms are getting worse, how can fragile renewable energy infrastructure survive the superstorms of the future?

After a weird summer of floods and heatwaves, scientists explain why weather extremes are ‘on steroids’

By climate reporter Jess Davis

When winds as high as 260 kilometres per hour tore down transmission towers in South Australia in 2016 and plunged the state into an electricity void, it took people by surprise.

The sight of high-voltage transmission lines, crumpled on the ground was almost surreal.

Eight years later, as fierce storms broke over Victoria, images of wilted towers were again causing consternation.

…

Storms get more intense

What climate scientists do know is that with more energy in the atmosphere, storms are becoming more intense.

“When you have events like squall lines or cyclones, tornadoes, thunderstorms, they have more energy available to them,” director of the Monash Energy Institute Roger Dargaville said.

Dr Dargaville said he was surprised wind could knock over transmission towers back in 2016, but that’s no longer the case.

“It’s now a very real possibility and will probably occur many times in the future,” he said.

…Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-28/global-warming-effect-on-extreme-weather-events/103471564

Professor Dargaville also recently argued for more renewables;

Monash expert: Wild weather aftermath – the security of Victoria’s energy grid and the need for renewables 

Monash University
14/02/2024
Associate Professor Roger Dargaville, Director Monash Energy Institute, Resources Engineering, Faculty of Engineering

Monash University experts are available to comment on the power blackout and related aftermath as a result of wild weather in Victoria yesterday, and how our energy grids could be made more resilient in the future. 

…

The following can be attributed to Associate Professor Dargaville:

“On Tuesday afternoon, a severe storm belt with wind gusts over 100km/h, extreme lightning and torrential rain caused havoc across Melbourne. Amongst lots of localised power outages due to low voltage power lines being damaged was the destruction of several towers supporting the parallel 500kV lines between Melbourne and Geelong. The effect of losing that vital infrastructure was to ‘trip off’ the Loy Yang A power station.

…

“Distributed renewable energy systems offer both more vulnerability due to more infrastructure spread over wider areas, but also additional resilience as losses of individual power lines don’t have the same impact of losing large centralised power stations.

…Read more: https://newshub.medianet.com.au/2024/02/monash-expert-wild-weather-aftermath-the-security-of-victorias-energy-grid-and-the-need-for-renewables/37361/

Even if we assume for a moment this super storm claim is true, Professor Dargaville’s position does not make sense.

Consider these alternatives propositions for future energy generation:

  1. Build an energy system which depends on vast acreages of fragile sheets of glass and machines designed to catch the wind, along with vastly enlarged power grids to capture this dispersed energy, which you know will be massively vulnerable to the raging superstorms of the future.
  2. Build a set of compact nuclear reactors encased in thick steel and concrete armour, located at a sufficient elevation to eliminate the risk of flooding, utterly invulnerable to any possible storm, located as close as possible to energy end users, to minimise the risk of supply disruption caused by storm damage to distribution networks.

Why is Professor Dargaville advocating for the option which he admits is will increase vulnerability to storm damage, and not even mentioning the nuclear option, which offers near total climate resilience and a steady supply of reliable and dispatchable zero carbon energy?

Fragile, weather dependent renewable energy systems are not fit for purpose, and will never be fit for purpose. They don’t make sense today, and they would make even less sense in a future filled with climate superstorms.

Don’t think for a moment I take the claim of future superstorms seriously, why should the current crop of alarmist climate predictions be any different to the previous 30 years+ of failed climate predictions? But Professor Dargaville’s advocacy of renewable energy does not make sense, even in the context of his own claimed position on future climate disruption.

Ed Miliband Wants £200 Billion Of Your Money To Plaster The Countryside With Pylons

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

The march of electricity pylons across Britain’s countryside is set to accelerate under Labour plans to make it easier to build new transmission lines across hills and open countryside.

Ed Miliband, shadow energy secretary, and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, will set out plans at this week’s party conference to “rewire Britain” and build a cleaner energy grid, potentially unlocking £200bn of private investment.


It follows warnings from multiple sources, including Nick Winser, the government’s own Electricity Commissioner, that the lack of grid capacity and connections are blocking deployment of renewables and the switch from gas to electric home heating.


However, Labour’s plan is likely to prove highly controversial because it will mean building thousands of new electricity pylons and cables across rural or wild landscapes.

https://netzerowatch.us4.list-manage.com/track/click

Quite apart from the environmental vandalism, just let that £200bn of private investment sink in.

Whenever Labour talks of “investment”, keep a tight hold of your wallets! Private investors are not going to hand that money over out of the kindness of their hearts. They will demand a hefty pay back.

Consequently energy users will not just have to pay the £200bn back, which by the way amounts to about £8000 for every home in the UK, but a handsome profit on top.

Yet another cost of Ed Miliband’s wretched Net Zero obsession.

How on earth did this idiot ever get his hands on Britain’s energy policy?

Pylons to be forced on public to hit net zero goal

Hundreds of miles of overhead cables and pylons are expected to be fast-tracked through the planning system despite local opposition, so Britain can meet its net zero targets.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

Increasingly the public are simply being left out of the loop of decision making as far as Net Zero is concerned:

Hundreds of miles of overhead cables and pylons are expected to be fast-tracked through the planning system despite local opposition, so Britain can meet its net zero targets.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is devising sweeping planning reforms that industry leaders say are needed for the UK to hit milestones such as eliminating fossil fuel generation by 2035.

Ministers are increasingly concerned the growing demand for energy could outpace the capacity of the national grid, as households switch to electric cars and heat pumps while there is also a massive national expansion in wind power.

John Pettigrew, the chief executive of National Grid, told TheTelegraph it would be “incredibly challenging” to expand the existing network to meet the Government’s targets without major planning reforms.

Currently, the UK generates up to 14GW of energy from offshore wind farms. The Government’s net zero plan includes raising that capacity to 50GW by 2030.

Mr Pettigrew said: “Without planning reform, if you’re trying to get to 50GW by 2030, that’s going to be difficult … You have to see a shortening of the planning process.”

He added that by 2035, when the sale of petrol and diesel cars will be outlawed in favour of electric alternatives, the grid “is going to need to meet a demand that is 50 per cent higher than it is today”.

DESNZ, run by Grant Shapps, the Energy Security Secretary, is said to be supportive of detailed plans submitted by National Grid for radical planning reform. It would be designed to allow construction of additional overhead cables and pylons in as little as half of the current seven-year period that usually elapses before such projects receive formal consent.

However, the proposals advocated by DESNZ are facing resistance in the housing and environment departments, where officials fear a public backlash to a significant loosening of planning restrictions for energy projects.

Under the plans, ministers would issue formal guidelines – known as a National Policy Statement – later this year, effectively mandating planning inspectors to approve projects needed to help the UK to meet its targets.

This would be followed by a separate document setting out specific schemes, including electricity transmission cables, pylons and wind farms, that form part of the Government’s net zero plans – in order to put the “full weight of planning law” behind each of the specific proposals.

Ministers would also slash the seven-year planning process to build new transmission cables and pylons.

The final 18 months of that period is the Development Consent Order process, when the Planning Inspectorate decides whether to approve the project.

“Three to six months could be shaved off that,” said Mr Pettigrew.

John Armitt, the chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, which advises the Government, suggested plans would always draw some local opposition.

But he added: “You can’t really accept that those local concerns are going to prevent the major transitions that this country has got to make over the next 20 years in dealing with net zero, dealing with climate change, and fundamentally in terms of the transmission lines, electrifying our country in a way that it’s not relied on electricity to such a large degree in the past.”

Mr Pettigrew added: “The more clarity you have in the policy and the easier it is for the inspector to then make a decision.”

He added that currently, “if there are local communities that feel that the balance hasn’t been structured correctly between where it’s landing and how it impacts their community, then they can take a secretary of state to judicial review”.

But he said: “That in itself can be a two-year process. More clarity around the need case, more clarity around the urgency and that it supports [government] policy, and you are minimising the likelihood of that legal challenge.”

National Grid has told the Government that an initial draft National Policy Statement failed to adequately set out the “pace and urgency” required. It submitted a formal response to a consultation on the document, which closed a week ago.

Mr Pettigrew said: “What that statement needs to do is be absolutely clear about the need and the pace and urgency of the energy-related infrastructure that is needed, to recognise the critical urgency of extending the networks to support net zero.

“By doing that, then, if the Planning Inspectorate follows that policy, then there’s less ambiguity and therefore less likelihood that it will be legally challenged, which quite often happens in these processes.”

National Grid has proposed that the Government wins support from local communities with incentives such as lower energy bills for those living near new energy infrastructure.

Barney Wharton, director of Future Electricity Systems at Renewable UK, the renewables industry body, said: “I think there needs to be a kind of a national debate about what infrastructure we need and where and how we build it. Because it is a fundamental change in the way we design our power system.

“And there are going to be areas of the country, as we’re seeing in East Anglia, where you haven’t had electrical infrastructure before and now you’re going have a lot more – and that’s a change.”

Maps drawn up by National Grid show hundreds of miles of new pylons and overhead cables which it says need to be completed by 2030, including a 112-mile power line between Norwich and Tilbury to connect two wind farms off the Suffolk coast.

The project, which runs through Therese Coffey’s Suffolk Coastal constituency, already has significant opposition in East Anglia.

Last week, National Grid published plans for 55 miles of new power lines between North Humber and High Marnham, in Nottinghamshire.

Bottlenecks in transmitting power from Scotland to England are expected to increase to as much as £2.5 billion by the mid-2020s, as National Grid is forced to pay wind farms to switch off and buy more gas-generated power.

The net zero department is expected to publish a “connections action plan” in the summer and a review is currently examining ways to halve “delivery times” for grid infrastructure, such as overhead cables and pylons.

A spokesman for the department said: “Since 2010, we have increased the amount of renewable energy capacity connected to the grid by 500 per cent – the second highest amount connected in Europe.   

“We want to go further as part of our plans to power up Britain with cleaner, cheaper and more secure homegrown energy.

“That is why we’re working to cut the time it takes to connect projects, building upon work already under way by network operators and Ofgem.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/01/pylons-forced-on-public-net-zero-goal-environment/

And then of course is the cost of all this!