Wow!, them North Islanders really get worked up about nothing.
Especially when it's for the good of themselves and everyone else.
What I'm talking about (as Kiwi will be more than aware), is the plans for Transpower, the owners of the National HV Grid, to start on upgrading the existing 220kV sections of the system to 400kV.
The basic outline of the first part of the upgrade can be seen here .
However, this idea hasn't gone down all that well, as this story proves.
(Warning:Bad language on the protesters placard!, never saw it when posting the story)
The local media have been having a field day here with all of the protesting and other rubbish going on.
There have been calls, for the 400kV work to be all undergrounded, however, this is a lot easier said than done and the cost would be horrendous.
Even the Green party is in on the act, with this comment
Also, with the advent of Over-head reticulation being mentioned, all the Environmentalists are jumping up and down about the effects of the pylons on the landscape and the effects of the EMF's on people that will have to live near the lines.
(These are the same Environmentalists, that protested on the roof of a coal fired power station last week.)
To the south of Christchurch, (where Kiwi lives), there are 220kV O/H lines everywhere, no-ones worried about them too much, as long as the lights stay on.
Some people just need to get real!.

{Message edited to add warning}

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 03-04-2005).]

I've had conversations with people here over underground vs. overhead transmission and distribution lines.


So many people think that all lines should be run underground so as not to spoil the scenery, but would they be prepared to pay for it in the form of greatly increased utility bills? They just don't realize how much more expensive underground is.

It's a similar thing with the protesters against windfarms. They object to them on aesthetic grounds, but don't want more conventional or nuclear power stations either, nor do they want to cut down on their ever-increasing electrical loads.



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 03-04-2005).]

Hi there Paul,
You are dead right in your above comments!.
It seems like everyone want's everything as long as it won't effect them personally or it won't cost them a cent.
IMHO, I don't think most people that are arguing about this whole thing, have any concept whatsoever about installing circuits of this size.
Most people seem to think it's like running a cable to your new Garage or the like.
This is 400,000 Volts we are talking about here and the depth of the trench would be something to be seen, because if it ain't deep enough, you can bet your bottom dollar some idiot is going to strike the thing, one way or the other.
Even the sub-marine DC cables in Cook Strait here get struck and pulled up by ship anchors every now and then and that's at sea.
There is a lot of talk about the hieght of the pylons (70m/200ft?), this is one of the things that I can't understand, people fail to see why lines like this are placed so high up in the air, it's to keep people away from them.
400kVAC has never been used here before and having said that, we don't even make cable for it here.
Our highest HVAC voltage is 220kV.
I couldn't agree more there, mate.
It's a no-win situation, really.
But I'll keep you guys posted on this one, surely common-sense has to prevail here?.

Just wrap a couple more turns of insulation tape around it and cover it over! Or pull it through a big garden hose like that 2.5 T&E they ran to the shed! Sheesh, you tech people are always trying to make a big deal out of these things.

OK Paul,
I've put a quote in for NZ$2670 for the whole job.
Problem solved!.
We are using #8 fencing wire, insulated with garden hose, for the whole run.
You bring the shovel, I'll bring the beer.
If you dig fast enough we should have the work done by, umm, 2017.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 03-06-2005).]

People have no idea how big these cables really are. When they're up on pylons they don't look a whole lot bigger than the cable going into the back of your washing machine.

We've had similar protests here where vitally needed overhead 220kV lines were held up around Cork Harbour for similar reasons. The ESB didn't want to run them subsea under the harbour as there was a very serious risk of anchor damage due to the busy nature of the harbour and estuary. There was also a very signifigant increase in cost involved even for this relatively short crossing.

400kV's been used here for quite a while but only on 2 lines that connect a very large coal-fired powerstation on the west coast to the greater Dublin area on the east coast. However, they terminate some 60 miles outside Dublin and feed into the local 220kV and 110kV infrastructure.

The original 1920s grid was 110kV and 220kV was introduced as demand went up. 400kV only arrived in the 1970s.

Aucklanders will whinge about anything though Trumpy. Thats why we don't live there ! ! They whinged when their underground feeder failed in the 2000 CBD blackout. And now they'll whinge when offered an overhead solution.

They want hot smoked chicken paninis and lattes without the pylons. Take pity on them, they don't understand.

Kiwi, it's the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) problem.

We have a situation in Ireland where waste costs have spiraled out of all control because no one wants landfills or incineration of municipal waste BUT at the same time no one wants to reduce or recycle either.

And very few people think of where the power to heat all those lattes comes from!



[This message has been edited by djk (edited 03-11-2005).]

I'm pretty peeved at the moment.
There was an expert on the "Paul Holmes" show from Canada that was bought over here to comment on the 400kV lines and thier safety.
When she didn't say what Mr Holmes wanted her to, he would just cut her off.
He then swapped to an OB of one of his "reporters" using an "expert" with a Gauss meter, of what type we'll never know or even if the thing was properly calibrated.
When in this house with 2 circuit 220kV going right over the roof, did give a reading of 33 mG, Mr Holmes asked if this was dangerous, the Canadian expert said No, she was cut off again.
I personally think that Mr Holmes likes to have people that enforce his "Sensationalised" form of the news.
More to the point, his brand of pseudo-science, is doing more harm than good.
Considering that there was a TV aerial in the same field, and it was not being affected, according to the TV picture in the lounge, speaks volumes.
But Mr Holmes didn't ask anyone in NZ to come on his programme, instead he used "experts" from Australia and the US, who would say what Mr Holmes would like, if you paid them enough.
Cheque-book journalism all over again.

Trumpy,

It's very easy to whip up hysteria around any issue with the word "radiation" in it.

The question that I always raise is why isn't there a massively increased incidence of cancer in people who work with powerlines and large transformers on a daily basis?

Also, loads of domestic appliences throw out pretty serious EM fields. CRT Televisions in particular, and we spend a signifigant percentage of our lives happily sitting directly in front of these machines and have done for quite a few decades at this stage.

If you take the hysterical anti EM argument to its logical conclusion tvs, electric induction motors, household cabling, mobile phones, radios, tv transmitters etc should all be banned immediately.

It's completely crazy..

Also, what's the big deal about 400kV ? NZ is criss crossed with 220kV and 110kV ? lines that are closer to the ground and prob. much running with relatively high loading and throwing out equally or even larger EM fields in more populatated areas and have been for many many years.

400kV is VERY common elsewhere in the world in countries with larger populations.

You would think having spent several weeks in the darkages after the power line melt down that Aucklanders would have some appreciation that this kind of infrastructure is necessary for modern life!

We've had similar hysteria around HV lines but more particularly about ANY type of transmitter.. UHF TV, FM, GSM Mobile phone, emergency service radio systems etc.

There was even an incident of criminal damage to a mobile phone tower which took several networks off the air in a wide area as it interfered with point-to-point microwave links!

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 03-16-2005).]

There are idiots in England too, they want the electricity, but they don't want the cables to supply it cluttering up leafy Surrey lanes.

The majority of these people don't even know the difference between kVa and kV, so we shouldn't let them get up our nose as they are simply stupid with lives so dull they like to shout about things they know nothing about.

That's for sure. So many people only seem to see radioactive waste containers or high-voltage power lines radiating "death rays" when they hear the word. Try telling them that we need certain types of radiation just to live on this planet and they look at you as if you're mad.

It had to happen didn't it!.
I think it was last week on the TV,
there was a heap of people out at night standing under some HV lines, all holding up
Fluorescent Tubes.
This is not a new trick at all, in fact as any Radio Ham will tell you, it's the quickest way to check if your transmitter and aerial system are working properly.
I can light up a tube quite well using as little as 25W on the HF bands, so you don't need a lot of Voltage or current to do this.
Paul,
Exactly, after all, that is what the sun does isn't it?.
And the earth also has a powerful magnetic field too (not really radiation though).
My belief is, most people don't really know as much about the Physical Sciences these days as what they should do, this has to be part of the problem causing all this hysteria, that to a certain degree, is basically un-necessary.

The real problem is the Gutter press and other "Alarmist" types of journalism.

Most people believe what they read or hear from this part of society, because they are too daft or lazy to look into the evidence themselves..

Speaking of gutters,
There was an elderly guy on TV the other night at 7pm (I forget which show it was) that reckoned he had the answer to undergrounding 400kV power circuits.
From what I can tell, it looked like he had a whole lot of metal downpipes and there was a lot of talk about "Skin Effect" with Electric currents.
Now I'm not one to stomp on a good idea, but I don't really think that this guy has done his homework.
He also reckoned he's patented the idea, so I don't know.
Did either of our other NZ sparkies see the news item?.
My understanding of Skin effect, is that it applies only to High frequency currents, with lower frequencies being transmitted through the bulk of the conductor material.
Indeed a transmission system made out of downpipe sections, doesn't sound like my cup of tea.
Jointing and insulating (let alone bending it around corners)it somehow rule this idea out I think.
Oh and by the way, it's cooled by Nitrogen gas.

Sounds like this guy is talking about an underground super-conductor made out of downpipe ? ! Was he from Auckland Trumpy ?

The nuclear solution for Auckland (no I don't mean bombing them !) has been talked about a lot lately. I'd like to hear from some of the other members who have nuclear electricity generation. Pros and cons ?

Yeah kiwi,
I think that's what the guy was on about.
Mind you, it was rather hard to work out exactly what it was that the guy was building.
I'm not sure where he was from either.
In reality, I think that NZ is going to have to eventually bite the bullet and allow nuclear energy in here.
Alot of people (the Greens mainly) aren't going to like it, but apart from building a few more Hydro stations, we have basically run out of options as far as real Electricity generation goes in this country.
Excepting of course, smaller wind and solar installations for smaller towns, etc.
Nuclear power has made huge leaps in safety and efficiency since accidents like Chernobyl in the 80's and I think that there is a mental stumbling block in people's minds.
There are hundreds of nuclear plants working the world over that are perfectly safe.
If it does come to this, kiwi, the next question will be, where will they site the thing?.
Because if they don't want some ugly powerlines near thier land, they sure as H*ll aren't going to want a nuclear reactor down the road either.
Surely it would have to be placed in the South Island.
My only concern about basing a reactor here in NZ, is our suseptibility to earthquakes.
They don't call us the Shaky Isles for nothing!.

{Views expressed in this post are only my personal opinion}

Here in Belgium they introduced the policy to slowly phase them out. At present they account for about two-thirds of the capacity (Belgium is maybe in second place for nuclear after France)

The BIG drawback with them still appears to be the high costs of dealing with the spent fuel and of decomissioning the old reactors. Those costs it seems were hugely underestimated or even overlooked when they were installing the stations all through the 1960s and 1970s.

In my opinion the fuel reporocessing option seems to be worst of all. Costs a fortune to build the plant, requires long-distance shipments of spent fuel etc by plane or boat or train, which seems risky when you consider all the trouble they have been having in Germany lately, and historically at all the sites where in Europe where reprocessing has been carried out (at La Hague in France and in the UK at Sellafield and Dounray) there have always been problems with unwanted isotopes like Technetium and Strontium being discharged into the environment above the maximum levels. Although the reactors themselves generally have outstanding safety records, the reprocessing plants seem to be a nightmare.

My personal opinion: on the whole, although I am not completely against the idea of nuclear power, there are an awful lot of down-sides that are swept under the carpet even after the simple prejudice thing of "oh I don't want one of those by *my* house". The energy companies are doing no favours to themselves or to anyone by not levelling with us on ALL the costs and risks, because the general level of debate always seems to consist of the kneejerk mentioned earlier, counteracted by the pro-nuclear ones who generally downplay the genuine risks or costs when they think that there is a chance of them detracting from the chances of a lot of money being made in installing and running them.

Would you say that in NZ, that there is a lot of leeway to cut down the amount of power that is needed in the first place? I still believe there is too much wastage of power over here (one example: every kilometre of Belgian motorway is lit up as bright as day, all night long. Now, there's really no need, except for proper lighting at junctions and so on, like they have it in France and the UK. There is not a star in the night sky to be seen anywhere from Waterloo, just south of Brussels, right up to the Belgian coast, because the whole sky has that yellowy sodium glow to it)

Trumpy,

For a country like NZ or Ireland (similar size and population spread) Nuclear power would make very little sense.

The reprocessing costs, particularly given New Zealand's relative remoteness from any reprocessing centre would be absolutely enoromous and would outweigh any economic gains.

Also, the nuclear industry hasn't really made any great leaps forward in terms of safety in recent years or since chernobyl. The accident at Chernobyl was a combination of odd management structures and a very unfortunate case of human error. The design of the reactors at chernobyl is also very odd and similar units were never exported outside of the exUSSR.

The rest of the world's nuclear reactors are generally quite a lot safer but there has been no major improvement in terms of safety at these reactors in recent years.

In theory, if there was a major catastrophy at any of these plants there could be chernobyl-like problem all over again. Thankfully, most of them (outside of the former soviet countries) are well run.

The economics behind nuclear power are highly dubious too. Most plants operate with enormous indirect state supsidies. The justification for these is that the technology is so dangerous that it is in the public interest to ensure that safety standards are kept as high as possible. Hence, billions of tax payer euros, dollars or yen still pour into the industry to keep it working.

While, yes, it does not produce greenhouse gasses, the byproducts of a nuclear power are perhaps far worse than climate change which we could adapt and survive along side! Nuclear accidents cause damage that could last for millenia and wipe out all life in any given area.

Ireland's east coast is only a few miles away from Sellafield, the UK's largest reprocessing facility, and we've had signifigant problems with pollution and contamination fo the Irish sea... waste being pumped directly into the sea or dumped in sealed containers.. (this has been going on since the 1950s...

There are many better and ecologically sound alternatives that could be used.

e.g. the use of Biomass ... growing plants that can be used in power generation plants and farmed.. The new crops absorb CO2 as they grow, so when they're burned the net increase in CO2 levels cancels out.

Wind and hydro can make some contribution but they'll never be the full answer.

The nuclear power industry seemed to interlink directly with the development of nuclear weapons technology during the coldwar. It was simply a spin-off byproduct of arms developement in many ways. Some of the plants didn't even make sense without the context of nuclear weapons.


... I just hope NZ doesn't go the nuclear route!



[This message has been edited by djk (edited 04-17-2005).]

Interesting turn this thread has taken. Talking of things taking a turn, the "windmills" are becoming much larger than the original versions. Some are now on the scale of megawatts and what began as the hobby of enthusiats has turned into an engineering challenge. The rotors are HUGE and demand advanced materials. Some new concepts have sprung up, like using DC for transmission of wind power: The rotor is allowed to spin at an rpm which is optimal with respect to the wind speed, independent of the power grid frequency.

The image of nuclear power as "high tech" is fading as wind and biomass are becoming more and more advanced.

I read that the best material for turbine blades is Sitka Spruce timber. It's just it takes a lot of whittling to make a blade...

Thanks for your post Jooles. If Belgium is phasing out the nuclear electricity, what are they replacing it with ?

Trumpy, I tend to agree with you and DJK. Nuclear isn't the best solution, but we'll "bite the bullet". And with a bit of education we could use 50% less electricity.

C-H There is a wind turbine under construction in NZ with an 11m prop span ! ! They're just getting bigger & bigger ! Theres designs in the U.S. of 45M props

It would be nice if super-conductors could come in and solve our electricity woes. If this does happen, it would be a shame to have built nuclear reactors.

What for the future?

The clear thing is that they are putting up and up and up the price of electricity, to discourage its use as far as possible. This will relieve Electrabel of the need to generate such a lot. They say high tax is the mark of a civilised society, don't they :-)

They are studying the use of tidal power at the mouth of the Schelde to the English channel because it has the potential they say to take on about 10 per cent of the present load. It is very wide and very tidal indeed and there's obviously a lot of power there to be tapped.

They are looking at the use of more wind power to add to generation.

They are looking at storage of power by hydroelectric means and by electrolysing water to hydrogen+o2 at offpeak to be burnt in dual-purpose natural gas/hydrogen turbine plants.

They will be building more gas power sations.

The framework is they will stop the nuclear reactors when they reach 40 years of operation, and will not be building new ones. The reprocessing cycle was phased out years ago, so spent fuel now is stored on site. The last new reactor came on-stream in 1985, so the measures above need completion before 2025.

It all started perhaps from this point:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/1998/infcirc549a3.pdf

Then there was an update for the report for the OECD dated in 2001, which says:

"Belgium has made the political decision to phase out nuclear power, closing down the existing units when they reach forty years of age and building no new units. The report recommends Belgium to look for realistic and economic alternatives for large-scale energy production."

and

"One of the most crucial elements is curbing the growth of energy consumption, which exceeded 20% in all sectors in the 1990s. Federal-regional co-operation is essential for successful energy-policy development and implementation in Belgium."

A lot of windfarms are proposed for around here, and one of 66 turbines is being built within sight right now. Except that they have discovered an incompatibility with nuclear power stations. Since 9-11 the nuclear station down the east coast from Edinburgh has had an anti-aircraft battery controlled by radar, and this radar is affected by clutter from the moving blades of wind turbines, so they've had to limit the wind farm to the 44 lowest ones beneath the radar sweep. You can't have both, apparently!

The sun is nuclear. The sun produces radiation, both ionizing and non-ionizing, of MANY types. For pity's sake don't tell the activists this, they'll have it shut down, then it'll be cold.

I've seen some of the old newsreels from when Britain's first nuclear (or "Atomic" as it was often called then) station opened.

There was talk that in the future electricity would be so cheap ro produced that it wouldn't be metered -- Just pay a flat rate for service like manu of here still do for water. I guess that idea isn't going to happen now!

Being by the North Sea, we already have a good few windfarms on the Norfolk coast, with more planned.

That was I should think the opening of the first of the Calder Hall reactors in 1956.

The original Gas Cooled Reactor.

It was a dual-purpose design and was not very efficient at electricity generation. The later generations of GCRs were wickedly well-designed though.

They had four of those primitive magnox designs running at the Windscale/Sellafield site, and four almost-identical at Chapelcross in Scotland. The duality was that they had extra capacity in their cores for manufacturing tritium, needed in cold war times for H-bombs. But apparently, tritium was only available to the military from Chapelcross and not Cumbria. There exists still a need for tritium in the UK, for use in its arsenal, and it is a worry for them because the half-life is only quite short at 7.5 years, so you are running out, guys! And import or export of tritium is reasonably tightly controlled.

The fire in Windscale 1 pile was a taste of things to come with graphite-moderated reactors, as the distortion of the grahite bricks by neutron bombardment and consequent storage of Wigner energy led to Chapelcross eventually having a nasty accident; 24 fuel rods slipped straight through the channels and crashed to the hard-to-access area in the reactor sump, because the restraining mechanisms were no longer in the right places. Graphite apparently goes all puffy and strange in a tank full of neutrons flying about everywhere :-)

Chapelcross was then shut down, after being in operation at least 20 years beyond the planned shutdown in 1979, taking into account the 20 year lifespan when the first reactor there went critical in 1959. And Calder Hall, being the same design, was reassessed and deemed too risky also, so it closed too.

The whole trouble with Atomic Energy/Nuclear Power (nice distinction there PaulUK) appears to be summed up well by things of this type. Poor planning and poor and incomplete costings led to too much investment in large amounts of kit that just can't go on forever and which needs endless TLC after its useful lifetime in order to perserve public safety. Still; very easy to be wise after the event, eh?

I wonder. At home, I use gas as the main heat-providing fuel (cooking, heating, hot water). What do most people here do? It seems a bit wasteful, generating and distributing such a valuable resource as electricity, using scarce or polluting fuels sometimes, only to then plug big resistors into the circuit at a great distance for boiling a potato or something like that.

Kiwi,
That's a good point, NZ would have to be the worst country in the world as far as wasting electricity goes.
I mean, look at the number of people that leave lights on, heaters without thermostats on them, or my favourite, people that run thier AirCon with the doors and windows open.
When we had our last power crisis here, some people that I spoke to in offices thought you could destroy all the data in a PC,just by turning it off at night!.
One idiot I saw once was heating his lounge and kitchen by having the Oven on high with the oven door open.
I mean, the less of this behaviour we have, the less power gets wasted.
Oh and BTW Kiwi, if it's education you're talking about, people like I've mentioned above, deserve to be in kindergarten.

The answer to small-island power supplies may be arriving, in the form of High Voltage Direct Current. HVDC is not a new idea, indeed English Electric presented a 100kv machine called a 'Tranverter' in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924. What's new is solid-state devices (triacs) enabling economic conversion and reconversion at the ends of the transmission lines. (The 'Transverter' was mechanical, although General Electric in the US were working on Thermionic Valve systems at that time). The point is, 400kv HVDC can be transmitted vast distances economically, our granfathers were no fools, (no reactance, no inductance), and it can be run as one cable, undersea if required. This opens the possibility of utilising the vast hydro-electric resources of Norway and Canada, currently making aluminium, to serve consumers in Europe and the US. In another forum we saw that electric locos of 1MW were using Triacs, so this is feasible.
The 'public' seem to think that you can transmit electical-power for free! No thought of the capital costs or transmission loss costs enter what few brain-cells they have. I remember once spending 45 minutes carefully explaining to a BBC TV reporter how we avoided killing the employees in our plant, with a series of logic devices, cctv, recorders, sensors, computers, etc, only to have the whole multi-million pound investment broadcast nationwide as a "black box" !!! In reality, it's actually cheaper and more efficient to transport coal or oil in a railway wagon or semi than it is to send it in a conductor, and that's a fact.

HVDC is precicely what the Cahora Bassa scheme uses to transmit hydropower to South Africa

see http://www.taprojects.co.za/media_articles/media_article_2.asp

There's a HVDC interconnector connecting Northern Ireland to Scotland. Until relatively recently, Northern Ireland's grid must have been one of the smallest non-interconnected systems in Europe as even the interconnections with the Republic of Ireland had been out of service since the mid 1970s as they'd been targeted by NI paramilitary groups during the height of the "Troubles".

Eirgrid / ESB in the Republic of Ireland are starting their HVDC "East-West interconnector" project which will connect The Republic of Ireland into the UK grid at a point in Wales.

They're putting in 2 X 500MW HVDC circuits crossing the Irish sea.

Giving access to the UK and European networks.

So, looking into our collective crystal balls, do we see any possibility of dc being feasibly used for distribution, as well as for transmission, in the future?
Alan

Trumpy- there's a 1040MW HVDC cable between N and S islands New Zealand too.
Alan

Yes Alan,
I don't think there is a South Islander that doesn't know that's here.
BTW, for those that are interested, you can download maps of our National Grid from the Transpower Page .
A rather strange fact about that HVDC link, that I never knew before is that while we can send 1040MW to the North Island as normal.
If we have a fault down here, they can only send 600MW back this way.
There's also some good pictures of the HVDC gear used at Benmore and Haywards switching yard on that site too.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 05-05-2005).]

Interesting point Trumpy about the HVDC Link. I think the "Big Islands" power deficit is due to their puny rivers and the fact that they can't play rugby.

Do I sense un soupcon de mecontente between the N & S Islands?, or is it just my imagination. Do North Islanders take the small end off the top their boiled-eggs by any chance?
(Johnathan Swift; Gulivers Travels)

Alan

Yes Alan, I suppose you could say there is a "soup-can of malcontent" between the N & S islands. More for laugh-value than any real malice though, I assure you.

Alan,
I have to agree with kiwi on this one,
there is no malice behind it.
I think what this "attitude" stems from is a statement that is used in the media here from time to time, that "if the Auckland economy ever ground to a halt, the rest of New Zealand would do the same or would suffer".
This was proved wrong when the "Blackout" occured up there, in fact things seemed to run smoother, apart from all the whinging on the evening news every night.
Naturally it was everyone elses fault that Auckland lost power and how were "we" going to fix it?.

Alan, on the use of HVDC for distribution:

HVDC is finding its way into smaller and smaller transmission lines. For example, wind power farms at sea use this technology.

Underwater power lines have to use DC for technical reasons. The longest underwater AC line is about 100 km and goes to the Isle of Man. All islands that are farther from the grid than this are connected using HVDC, if connected at all. The Swedish island of Gotland is one example. A HVDC line was built in the 50's, one of the first.

An odd example is (old) Zealand in Denmark which is connected to the rest of the country with HVDC but with AC to Sweden. Thus, the power grid in Zealand is in sync with Norway/Sweden/Finland while that in Jutland is in sync with Germany/France/etc.

quote
----------------------
HVDC is finding its way into smaller and smaller transmission lines.
----------------------

My original train of thought was, how far could dc be distributed through to local levels before conversion to ac for the consumer. Would conversion losses/capital costs of stepping down be worse than transformers, as we slowly adopt more eco friendly energy sources?

Alan