Pylon of the Month

June's Pylon of the Month comes with a splash of colour. The fan of the website who sent it in said:

It’s not a very impressive pylon, but I thought it looked nice amid the yellow rapeseed.

I beg to disagree with the first part of that sentence! It's a perfectly lovely pylon - small but perfectly formed.  The contrast between the dark blue sky and the rapeseed is rather beautiful and reminds me of the colours of the Ukrainian flag. The pylon is located to the East of the village of Thoroton in Nottinghamshire and a quick look at the open infrastructure map tells me that it is probably a 132 kV line that runs North from Corby power station to Staythorpe power station. There is a 33 kV line nearby but those lower voltages are usually carried on wooden poles. Maybe not in this case, I've certainly seen 32 kV lines on pylons on X/Twitter/X, so clarification is welcome! 

The Countryside website is keen to encourage more of us to Buy British when it comes to rapeseed oil and provides lots of good reasons to do so. Here are three of them:

• Rapeseed provides a key and early food source for bees and pollinators.
• Rapeseed oil is a high-quality oil with a shelf life of approximately 12 - 18 months.
• Cold-pressed rapeseed oil contains around one third of the saturated fats of olive oil and is naturally rich in omega oils, vitamin E and antioxidants.

Thoroton also looks rather lovely if you find yourself in the area. It has a Grade 1 listed church and is on the banks of the River Smite and from there, it's only a shortish walk or a 5-minute drive to Orston and the Durham Ox Inn. 

That's all for now. If you want more pylons in your life before July's pylon makes an appearance, head to @pylonofthemonth on X/Twitter where you can keep up with the latest news and views on electrical infrastructure!

April's Pylon of the Month is one of those in the picture above. It's not like the old newspaper Spot the Ball game where I've chosen one secretly and you've got to guess which one it is and win a prize¹. Rather, you can choose your own favourite using whatever metrics you want. I'm going for the one on the right of the two reflected in the puddle. If you've found this page via X/Twitter, feel free to let me know if you chose a different one! 

The picture was sent to me by a colleague and fellow physics teacher and is located north of Kennington near Oxford. Eagle-eyed pylon fans will already have spotted the fact there are two different transmission lines in the photo. One at 400 kV and the other in the foreground with the less substantial pylons, at a mere 132 kV. The lower rated line heads to the West Oxford substation near Osney whilst the 400 kV Cowley-Seven Springs marches west to Gloucester and beyond. The picture also caught my eye as I sat writing this post with the rain coming down outside, because of the standing water. It's been a very wet year so far, but in this field, there were stripes of flooding that caught the eye of my colleague. A bit of research led to the conclusion that is an archeological remnant of a ridge and furrow ploughing:

Ridge and furrow is an archaeological pattern of ridges (Medieval Latin: sliones) and troughs created by a system of ploughing used in Europe during the Middle Ages, typical of the open-field system.

The stripes caused by the ridges and furrows can clearly be seen on the LIDAR image of the area below courtesy of https://www.lidarfinder.com/.

That's all for this month. See you in May when the weather will hopefully have improved!

1. According to this Guardian article from 2014, a jackpot hadn't been paid out for over 10 years in the Spot the Ball competition because so few people were entering the competition. As far as I'm aware, it isn't in any newspaper nowadays but there are, inevitably, online versions. This is one of them. https://playstb.com/

Sometimes in February, I just want a reminder of sunnier times to come, but this month's pylon sees me hunkering down with a seasonally appropriate pylon sent in by a fan of the website. He is such a fan that a 2024 calendar he produced to celebrate Yorkshire pylons made the news! Anyway, back to February and Blackstone Edge on the Lancashire/Yorkshire border where this picture was taken.  The pylon in the foreground is a tension pylon, specifically a D90, so called because the transmission lines are Deviating by 90 degrees. There was lots of detail about the difference between tension and suspension pylons back in February 2017 and it is worth visiting to see one of the most spectacular photographs to feature on the blog. The email that accompanied this month's pylon pointed out a detail that would have escaped the notice of all but the most eagle-eyed:

....the line coming from the left (from Padiham substation) is dual bundles, but about half-way along one jumper on each arm, another jumper has been added, the 3 then going to 3 glass insulators on the other side of the tower, meaning triple bundles going off into the distance towards Halifax.

I don't understand what is going on with this dual to triple bundle change but as always, I'd be delighted to find out more!¹ Sometimes my requests for further information do bear fruit. Back in September 2022, I wrote:

This type of pylon is (according to the French pylon Wikipedia page) a cat pylon (Le pylône Chat) and you can see why with the triangular features on top looking like ears. Whether that is a name recognised across international borders I have no idea - well travelled pylon experts please do get in touch and let me know.

A well travelled pylon expert did get in touch to point out that page 187 of a World Bank Environmental and Social Impact Assessment Study on the proposed 225 kV Bolgatanga-Ouagadougou Interconnection Project (Ghana side) contained a reference to a cat's head configuration tower.

Just one more thing I sign off. Any new pylon spotters who need help identifying the different pylon types should take a look at this excellent Spotters’ Guide to Pylons. It was published by the Pylon Appreciation Society, and although the website still exists, the society is sadly no longer active because the founder, Flash Bristow, died in 2020. See you in March!

1. Pylon enthusiasts did get in touch via Twitter: "I think the change is due to wind loading. The twin bundles are offset from each other with no spacers either. They start here where the line turns north, and has full exposure of the east-west wind over the Pennines." You can read all about it on Twitter.

Happy New Year to pylon fans everywhere!

January's Pylon of the Month is one of a famous pair from Cádiz in Spain. So famous in fact that they have their own Wikipedia page, which has this to say:

The Pylons of Cádiz, also known as the Towers of Cádiz, are two 158 m (518 ft)-tall pylons..........running from Puerto Real Substation to the substation of the former Cádiz Thermal Power Station, situated on the peninsula upon which the city of Cádiz stands.

They aren't as tall as the 190 m high Thames crossing pylons, and are only rated at 132 kV but size isn't everything, and the unusual truncated conical cross-section of the towers marks them out. This unusual design stems from the fact they were constructed from 1957-60 under the Franco regime. The huge steel carriers required for a more conventional design couldn't be manufactured in Spain and importing them was not an option. I almost used the word unique when describing the towers but if I had done, I might have been deluged with emails pointing out that the Shukov Tower on the Oka River has a very similar hyperboloid design. I feel like I should issue a content warning at this point in case anyone gets sucked down into a constructivist architecture internet rabbit hole - I escaped by the skin of my teeth. 

Cadiz was already on my "places to visit" list but it has moved up several places as a result of this month's pylon. That's all for now - see you in February!

December's Pylon of the Month should be plural - Pylons of the Month. I decided to go back and find all the December posts from previous years and bring them together. The layout is a bit all over the place, which I could presumably fix if I got stuck into a bit of HTML, but I decided to go with a rough and ready aesthetic instead. The first December pylon wasn't until 2012, over four years after the blog started which was a bit of a surprise. After that, I wasn't imbued with the Christmas spirit because I didn't bother with a December pylon for the next two years, but since 2015 there has been one every year. If you are at a very loose end and there is nothing on the TV over the festive season, it's easy to find all the posts on the Pylon of the Month archive.

The other thing that struck me is that there have been very few truly seasonal pylons. The only one that features snow is December 2017 which was from Spain and sits in the centre of the layout above. December 2019 did at least show pylon fans how they could buy a pylon-themed Christmas tree decoration, which got me looking for more of the same and led me to this wonderful PaintsPylons tree decoration. I've just ordered one and so should pylon fans everywhere. On that note, I'll sign off with a Merry Christmas to electricity infrastructure fans everwhere! See you in 2024.

October's Pylon of the Month was meant to make an appearance in September as an addition to the occasional series of 'What I did on holidays' pylons. It can still do that, but is also part of the rather more regular 'better late than never' series. The picture was taken on the outskirts of Ciutadella on the beautiful island of Menorca in late August. Having spent time on the beach, a rainy day proved to be the perfect opportunity to visit Lithica, a disused quarry that has been converted into a magical place. On the walk to the quarry, the appearance of a substation was an added bonus and I couldn't resist a photo with the pylon, for once, being upstaged by some serious electrical infrastructure. What caught my eye as much as anything was the rather striking blue glass insulator discs that you can just about make out in places. Anyway, back to Menorca which only has one traditional 245 MW power station near the capital Mahon. According to a recently published report, 97% of Menorca’s electricity demand in 2018 stemmed from the combustion of fuel oil and diesel at this power plant, while the contribution of renewable energy to the electric power system was 3%. The Menorca 2030 Strategy for decarbonising the island's energy system aims to do something about this by "placing Menorca at the forefront of clean energy usage and serving as a benchmark for other territories of the European Union". We had such a great time on the island that I might well go back annually to keep an eye on how the project is progressing. That's all for this month and I'm already working on November's pylon so hopefully, it won't be late!

Even the most unobservant readers of the blog will have spotted that August's Pylon of the Month is a bit different and I have @moakcarlsson to thank for bringing it to my attention on Twitter. I'll certainly be getting hold of a copy of the book she is currently writing that includes this and other CEGB adverts. The image of a pylon being plonked down by a hand from the sky is quite arresting and the issues raised in the text of the advert are as relevant today as they were over fifty years ago.  Some headlines from the last few months:

Give cash to households in path of new pylons, government urged

East Anglia pylons: Landowners contacted over 112-mile power line

Business owners say super pylons 'threaten future of countryside'

In Somerset, noisy new net zero pylons are marching across the countryside – and the locals are not happy [paywall]

Anger over revised route for 112-mile pylon line through Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex countryside

The push for net zero bringing ever more sources of renewable energy online is behind almost all of these headlines and the ones that will surely follow them for the foreseeable future. The National Grid's recently published ‘Delivering for 2035: Upgrading the grid for a secure, clean and affordable energy future’ sets a target of 'Building over 5 times more transmission overhead or underground lines than we have built in the last 30 years'. It's hard to find too many people opposed to the idea of greater use of renewable energy, but whilst it's easy to support the idea in principle it all gets a bit messy when the pylons affect you rather than other people. It's pretty much a textbook definition of NIMBYism.  Most of the objections to the routes chosen for the pylon lines could be addressed by spending a lot more money to bury the cables or, in some cases, routing them offshore but the cost of this is around ten times more expensive than traditional overhead lines, so unrealistic under most circumstances. That's all for this month. September will see a return to a pylon that you could actually visit if you were minded to do so!