[HN Gopher] Austria: Pylons as sculpture for public acceptance o...
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Austria: Pylons as sculpture for public acceptance of expanding
electrification
Author : Geekette
Score : 79 points
Date : 2025-10-28 09:56 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.goodgoodgood.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.goodgoodgood.co)
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| Austria has a long tradition of making infrastructure attractive:
| from railway stations to electric substations.
| logifail wrote:
| Apologies for raining on anyone's parade, but this is nothing
| more than concept art.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm not sure it's attractive either.
|
| It's better than a pylon but worse than a clear skyline.
| logifail wrote:
| > It's better than a pylon but worse than a clear skyline
|
| The design agency gets their clicks, but this will never
| happen. The end.
|
| Apologies for all those taken in by the concept art images
| who thought this kind of thing could/would ever be
| realised... Honestly, please DYOR.
| mips_avatar wrote:
| These sculptures are beautiful, I wish there was a way for public
| infrastructure to get more love (part of that love is building it
| quickly) in America.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Amazing! Let's hope we get these in the U.S.
|
| One thing that seemed ambiguous in the article: are these
| actually installed? The APG website [1] says "Two Austrian Power
| Giants -- one in the shape of a stork and the other of a stag --
| were pre-tested statically and electrotechnically to verify their
| technical feasibility." So are the images just renderings?
| qwertz123 wrote:
| For now, it's just a potential concept. Article in German:
| https://futurezone.at/digital-life/strommasten-hirsch-stoch-...
| logifail wrote:
| > Let's hope we get these in the U.S.
|
| This is concept art, no more, no less.
| foxglacier wrote:
| Yes, the author Kamrin Baker is clearly trying to fool readers
| into believing they're already installed. The "photo" captions
| are particularly misleading.
| fweimer wrote:
| The images are generated because it's a concept only:
|
| > This is a design concept and no concrete implementation is
| currently planned.
|
| https://www.apg.at/en/projects/austrian-power-giants-1/
|
| They don't say whether their design takes practical concerns into
| account and preserve the functional aspects that gave the pylons
| their current shape.
| seszett wrote:
| I'm sure something like this would be doable and I like the
| idea, but the stag doesn't seem structurally sound for example.
|
| People generally just want cables to be buried, but apparently
| this poses more problems than just added cost, so companies are
| reluctant to do it (as far as I understand it at least, I've
| only looked it up briefly in relation to the Ventilus/Boucle du
| Hainaut project here in Belgium).
| wongarsu wrote:
| Here in Germany there were still enough protests even against
| buried cables. The construction is still disruptive, and they
| aren't completely invisible afterwards (they emit heat that
| can lead to visibly different vegetation on the surface, and
| you can't plant trees on them) so they don't really satisfy
| the "but my property prices" crowd (of course they have a
| long list of real and imagined concerns, but imho they mostly
| boil down to disruption from construction, pseudoscience and
| property prices)
|
| Moving the discussion to "we put some sculptures in your
| landscape, and in return those sculptures carry some cables"
| might genuinely help
| logifail wrote:
| > Moving the discussion to "we put some sculptures in your
| landscape, and in return those sculptures carry some
| cables" might genuinely help [..]
|
| If you have the Alps on your doorstep, you may simply want
| your landscape to stay the way it is, neither adding
| (modern) sculptures nor (overground) power cables.
|
| Think of the Sierra Club.
| scottlamb wrote:
| I think this is one of many times it's not possible for
| everything to stay the same. If everyone fights and
| delays switch away from fossil fuels, the landscape will
| change in one way. If these lines are run, it will change
| in another. I have my opinions about which a true nature
| lover would prefer.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Where I live there is a very ugly line of cables that
| follows a motorway. This motorway was built recently.
| Surely they could have put a cable duct, trench or similar
| alongside it, or an under the adjacent cycle path.
| Maintenance would surely be cheaper too.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Surely they could have put a cable duct, trench or
| similar alongside it, or an under the adjacent cycle
| path. Maintenance would surely be cheaper too._
|
| Burying a cable is 3x to 10x more expensive than running
| it overhead. [1]
|
| Although faults are less common, they become much more
| expensive to fix - digging the cables up to fix is
| expensive, and it's even more expensive when you don't
| know quite where the fault is and you need a bunch of
| exploratory digging.
|
| And unlike California, Austria doesn't have a load of
| wildfire problems.
|
| [1] https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2024-11/11
| 1524_Un...
| https://www.theiet.org/media/ss5ndfti/electricity-
| transmissi...
| lostlogin wrote:
| Good links thanks.
|
| I'm sure the equation is different when the cabling is
| following a route that's already having earthworks done,
| but that would seem unlikely to overcome a 4-5x price
| difference.
| xg15 wrote:
| Not an expert on this, but why do the cables have to be
| buried? Couldn't you put them into a trench with some
| kind of cover, that could be quickly be opened again for
| maintenance?
| logifail wrote:
| > the stag doesn't seem structurally sound for example
|
| It's concept art, it doesn't have to be structurally sound or
| even make economic sense - the creators got their clicks!
|
| We ought to be more sceptical of this kind of thing :/
| petre wrote:
| It does. That was my first thought. Buried AC cables are not
| cost effective, DC is better but still more exprndive than
| aerial power lines.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Please could you explain this? Does burying them effect
| performance or it's just the added cost of a mega trench?
| petre wrote:
| Read on insulators and AC insulator losses, insulator
| aging, cost vs. air. Or ask your favourite LLM.
|
| A few bird shaped pylons near busy roads is probably
| nothing compared to miles of HVAC or HVDC cable and
| normalized insulation losses spread over its lifetime.
|
| Also the branches in the sculptures are used to break
| lightning into smaller electric arcs just like in regular
| pylons. Pretty cool. Very Victorian.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWYxrowovts
| padjo wrote:
| Lines in the air don't need any additional insulation.
| Cables underground need to be insulated. Now imagine how
| much insulation you need from 400kv, multiplied by hundreds
| of miles of cable and imagine how expensive that is. Now
| consider what happens if there's a fault.
| Jolter wrote:
| The linked article states implies they are built:
|
| "These are the first two prototypes -- which have already been
| developed and pre-tested for structural stability and high-
| voltage performance."
|
| That's very weaselly of them.
| xg15 wrote:
| The caption even more so "Photo courtesy of GP
| designpartners" - if this is not actually a photo.
| ishtanbul wrote:
| Great, lets make transmission even more expensive. I can imagine
| the engineers having a field day maintaining one-off tower
| designs. How about using a simple white or light blue pole tower
| that blends in more.
|
| The stag is cool but the bird is not.
| thomasmg wrote:
| > The stag is cool
|
| Yes.
|
| There is some psychological advantage. These ideas might make
| the overland options more acceptable for the population.
|
| Switzerland and other countries have nice looking (and
| sometimes expensive) sculptures in traffic roundabouts. For
| transmission lines, it might make sense, even if it is more
| expensive. Sure, it depends on the price. But it is much, much
| cheaper than burring the cables: underground transmission lines
| are roughly 10 times more expensive, due to cooling mainly (and
| sometimes this would require converting to DC). So there are
| three options: traditional (cheapest), such designs (more
| expensive), or hidden (10 times the price of traditional).
| flaboonka wrote:
| Something similar was previously proposed in Iceland
|
| https://grapevine.is/news/2015/10/16/these-human-shaped-pylo...
| robjeiter wrote:
| If only Austria would do nuclear than the grid would not need an
| expansion and electricity would be way cheaper. Or alternatively
| fracking could be used to increase the domestic gas production.
| There are plenty of reserves.
| nixass wrote:
| > If only Austria would do nuclear
|
| Now you're just talking crazy.
|
| People, we have crazy over here
|
| /s
| earthnail wrote:
| And where exactly does Austria plan to dump its nuclear waste?
| Which beautiful mountain should become unclimbable?
|
| Nuclear waste storage has way higher public acceptance problems
| than power cables.
| Animats wrote:
| This might be worthwhile for special situations, such as river
| and canyon crossings. There, the towers are huge and the spans
| are long.[1]
|
| Those super-tall towers are one-off designs and striking
| structures. Just putting a stork-shaped tower in the middle of a
| long line in open terrain looks silly.
|
| [1] https://transmissionlineworld.blogspot.com/2020/08/worlds-
| ta...
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| In Estonia a couple have been built.
|
| https://balticguide.ee/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Soorebane-...
| cma wrote:
| They say they statically and electrically verified, but say with
| the stag design. But are there reasons on the main tower the
| lines other than structural efficiency that they are set
| vertically on each side? With the stag they are spread out
| horizontally and I'm wondering if that has implications like much
| harder to service the lines by helicopter.
| itronitron wrote:
| Nice, they could put a sled after the 6th deer.
|
| My only concern is that a lot of people would probably be more
| inclined to play on them than the standard high-voltage pylons.
| aramattamara wrote:
| Have they tried burying the cables? Yes, it's more expensive, but
| if they care so much about the views...
| xeonmc wrote:
| If the proposal gets accepted, would they need to construct
| additional pylons?
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(page generated 2025-11-01 23:00 UTC)