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Where else in London are there pylons?
- n4r9 4y agoThat's a pity about the open infrastructure map not having the boundary for greater London. I'm not sure if it helps in any way but you can download an osm cut-out of greater London from Geofabrik: https://download.geofabrik.de/europe/great-britain/england/greater-london.html https://download.geofabrik.de/europe/great-britain/england/g... . You would then need a tool that loads an osm file and visualises the infrastructure components.
- pavia-20 4y agoThe author gave an update at the bottom of the article: Sunday update: Russ from Open Infrastructure Map has knocked up some code which generates a precise map of Greater London's pylons. Thanks Russ! Link to Russ' update https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1mYa https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1mYa
- londons_explore 4y agoFor anyone with time to spare, overpass-turbo is a great way to find/learn/do all kinds of things map-related.
- bcraven 4y agoThere is one next to the O2 which is upside-down! https://www.alexchinneck.com/a-bullet-from-a-shooting-star https://www.alexchinneck.com/a-bullet-from-a-shooting-star
- walthamstow 4y agoLea Valley between Walthamstow and Clapton is full of them
- shubb 4y agoThe deepest tunnels in London are the electricity grid tunnels. Inner London is served by a whole redundant network of them, and we only hear about it when the power (very occasionally) goes out because one catched fire and they have to wait for it to burn out. The last mile services are all burried too. It gives the city a very different look from what you get in Asia for instance, and I always ssumed it was because of the lack of earthquakes.
- zeristor 4y agoDo you mean like this: "Inside National Grid's Power Tunnels" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSzxTgDq3hM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSzxTgDq3hM
- voxadam 4y agoAnd by extension, "Power, Politics and Pragmatism: The British National Grid" by Tom Scott https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm5khEUIBx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm5khEUIBx0
- zeristor 4y agoI was after the Tom Scott video but thought I might have dreamt it. Mind you Geoff Marshall vs Tom Scott. I think Geoff Marshall would win a Tunnel off.
- Gys 4y agoPylon: 1. a tall tower-like structure used for carrying electricity cables high above the ground. 2. a structure on the wing of an aircraft used for supporting an engine or carrying a weapon, fuel tank, or other load.
- elihu 4y ago3. a Protoss building which costs 100 minerals and supplies 8 psi and allows you to warp in other buildings. Protoss executors are frequently reminded to construct more of these, though in my experience the effort might be better spent reminding them to build additional photon cannons instead.
- FractalParadigm 4y agoHere in Canada we refer to "traffic cones" as pylons. As someone living in London, Ontario, the first couple paragraphs of the OP was particularly funny to read; some sentences could be changed very minimally and apply all the same - "yet in a few places pylons are an intrinsic part of the landscape, like here along the edge of t̶h̶e̶ ̶R̶o̶y̶a̶l̶ ̶D̶o̶c̶k̶s̶ almost every road, due to construction."
- ThinkingGuy 4y agoMy first reaction to the article was "We don't really use the word 'pylon' to describe these things, at least not here in the southern United States," though the term makes sense and doesn't sound strange to me at all. But now I'm struggling to thing of what term I personally would use, and honestly, I'm having difficulty. "electrical tower?" "transmission tower?"
- mikestew 4y ago"High tension line towers", or...hmm, I guess I don't know what the common usage would be in the U. S., southern or otherwise. And we live a block from a local Redmond, WA trail that follows the line of...high tension towers for miles in either direction. But between my spouse and me, if we need to refer to them, we just call them "towers". "Pylons" are short little things, such as traffic cones (to borrow an example from another commenter).
- gnfargbl 4y agoThis is the first time I have seen the Open Infrastructure Map, and I was particularly struck by the global solar distribution: https://openinframap.org/#2/49.5/-53.93/S https://openinframap.org/#2/49.5/-53.93/S. Not what I expected, at all.
- te_chris 4y agoWow. Really emphasises the opportunity for more solar in most of the world!
- Sharlin 4y agoAssuming the map reflects the territory, obviously. Which is a rather huge assumption.
- starsep 4y agoThere are many solar plants not mapped due to lack of high quality, up-to-date aerial/satellite imagery, or volunteers. Germany is country mapped best, not necessarily having significant share of solar.
- Retric 4y agoMight also be how it’s displayed. Germany has quite a bit of solar but its less concentrated in giant solar parks and the country is smaller than US, China, or India. So for example US has multiple solar farms over 500MW and several over 200MW but none of Germany’s solar farms are over 200MW and only 4 are over 100MW.
- nicoburns 4y agoA quick google tells me that as of 2021, the US had ~23GW of installed solar generating capacity, and Germany had ~59GW. As the US has roughly 4x the population of Germany, that means that Germany has roughly 12x the amount of installed solar capacity per capita.
- dumb1224 4y agoPlenty if you ride your train further south enough. Starting from Wimbledon substation. https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/51.4307/-0.1884 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/51.4307/-0.1884
- jzellis 4y agoWe've got a line of em out between Watford and Rickmansworth along the Colne. (Just outside of Greater London but inside the Orbital.) One is my favorite - it's in a field by itself next to where I walk for exercise, and something about it is weirdly peaceful, like a remnant of a vanished civilization.
- Steve44 4y agoI'm not too far from you, there are quite a lot in the Iver area. One comes in and crosses the M25, then there is quite a lot of them between Iver Heath and Uxbridge.
- dazzawazza 4y agoThere is a string coming in from Colne valley to Harefield. There are some lovely walks next to the Grand Union Canal there. They recently had to divert the power lines for the HS2 line ripping it's way through.
- lucidguppy 4y agoThey must construct additional pylons.
- nemo44x 4y agoSpeaking as a human/Terran I am very much against this.
- DonHopkins 4y agoSilly Earthling. The Pylons were built by the ancient Altrusians, who devolved into the Sleestak. Do not tamper with the Light Crystals in the Matrix Table, or that will disrupt the weather and summon the Skylons. https://landofthelost.fandom.com/wiki/Pylons https://landofthelost.fandom.com/wiki/Pylons https://landofthelost.fandom.com/wiki/Altrusian https://landofthelost.fandom.com/wiki/Altrusian https://landofthelost.fandom.com/wiki/Crystals https://landofthelost.fandom.com/wiki/Crystals https://landofthelost.fandom.com/wiki/Skylons_(episode) https://landofthelost.fandom.com/wiki/Skylons_(episode)
- Tangurena2 4y agoThey want to make "pylons" - not "cylons". One is good for supplying electricity.
- bagpuss 4y agothis is an interesting art project from 2004 using the EM field around these lines to induce current in an array of fluorescent tubes https://vimeo.com/11137816 https://vimeo.com/11137816
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y agoIs there a way to watch this without creating an account?
- sklargh 4y ago> Sometimes the best questions come while waiting for a train. Very much yes. Maps to the theme of thinking space we’ve brought up here over the past 4-5 days.
- lepetitpedre 4y agoSeems like most of London i supply blocked...
- rbanffy 4y agoWhen I joined a web portal, that was part of Brazil's second largest telco, to manage a couple project teams (in 2008), one thing I got was a nice coffee table book describing that telco's data network in exquisite detail, down to detailed maps of fiber placement, routers, radio towers, and repeaters. I called it the "modern terrorist handbook" because, with it, anyone so inclined could almost completely cripple Brazil's communications.
- WeylandYutani 4y ago
- forgotusername6 4y agoWe've seen multiple acts of telecoms sabotage in the past month. Shetland and Marseille cables cut.
- DonHopkins 4y agoPutin's a high tech terrorist with lots of technical expertise, who regularly destroys so much infrastructure and shopping malls and murders a hell of a lot more people every day than you can by driving a car into a crowd.
- changadera 4y agoThis squashes the idea of some Londonites to become an independent city state. Try doing that with no electricity generation of your own, and nowhere to build one.
- zeristor 4y agoPretty easy to run a cable in from France n’est pas?
- walthamstow 4y agoWhere does Singapore get it's electricity from?
- kitd 4y agoOT, but UK pylons are gradually being replaced by a new design: https://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/4/10/1428685344192/New-design-for-pylons-009.jpg https://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2... The current "Milliken" design as shown in the article has changed very little since 1928.
- MrBuddyCasino 4y agoThis looks like it belongs on a set of a budget sci-fi movie. So bland, neither elegance nor character.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dcminter 4y agoAllow me to quote to you from a Punch article by E. V. Knox written in about 1930 (collected in "Things That Annoy Me" of 1932): The Pylons (Being the transcript of an unwritten radiologue, dated A.D. 2129) Once again we are threatened with a historical calamity. It is proposed to uproot the graceful pylons which adorn the line of the Sussex Downs and are the sole relics of the electricity cable which carried light and power to our forefathers along the Southern Coasts... Plus ça change...
- wearsshoes 4y agoDoes this exist online? When I searched I only found physical copies
- dcminter 4y agoI don't think so. He died in 1971 so it's still in copyright though I doubt anyone would care much. I don't know exactly which volume of punch the original article is taken from, and it's possible that that's up there somewhere. Oh, and I just double checked and my copy was published in 1930; the second edition was 1932. So quite likely the original article was in one of the 1929/1930 run.
- MichaelZuo 4y agoI'm surprised the electrical demands of Greater London can be supplied with so few transmission lines. For comparison the city proper of Toronto has slightly less with a fraction of the population. Surely a significant portion has to be underground?
- bayesian_horse 4y agoI think you need to construct additional pylons!
- yardstick 4y agoThe most frustrating thing about these pylons and cables pictured in the article is they come ridiculously close to the buildings beside them. At one point I was looking at renting an apartment in a building right beside them (Hoola), ultimately didn’t, in part because of the power lines. Turns out there is no/little regulation in how far away these lines must be from other buildings.
- toss1 4y agoAnd those power lines can have very real effects. When I had a computer network/support business, a somewhat competing business (they were mostly Mac, we were mostly Windows) with strong marketing and weak tech decided to move to a new location. The new location was on an upper floor of a converted old mill building near the river, railroad tracks, and high-voltage power transmission lines, which were just outside the windows on that floor (like only a few meters away). Several months later, they were out of business. The rumor around town was that they'd frequently lost large amounts of data and/or customer's entire drives (floppy and hard). I'm not sure if this was because they were all marketing and weak technologists and it just caught up with them in higher error rates with more biz, or if it was just one big error of being ignorant of the EM fields from the power lines outside windows (which I did hear second-hand that they'd started having random data loss in the new location, took too long to understand it, and were doomed by the time they figured it out). I'd also read about when the Tennessee Valley Authority started installing some of the first high-voltage transmission lines in the US, a clever adjacent homeowner buried a long wire in a set of coils under the lines and ran it to his house to supply power. He was eventually caught and argued that he wasn't stealing electricity because he was only collecting ambient power. He lost, as although the device was not mechanically contacting the lines, it was still of course electromagnetically coupled — the phenomena of which he was taking advantage.
- vr46 4y agoThe most dramatic one I know of near a road in London is right here, I used to ride there everyday. https://maps.app.goo.gl/ucSf4m2TPhqZnDS99?g_st=ic https://maps.app.goo.gl/ucSf4m2TPhqZnDS99?g_st=ic