‘Bungalow bliss’ will disrupt pylon plans, warns expert

The ‘bungalow bliss’ nature of the Irish countryside will make it difficult for EirGrid to avoid building its planned 400kV powerlines close to or even above people’s homes, according to a leading European representative group for cable and wire manufacturers.

It would be possible to avoid people’s homes by running the Gridlink cables underground in residential areas if rural housing development was more concentrated, said Volker Wendt, the director of public affairs with Europacable.

However, with ‘one-off’ housing the norm and much coveted in the Irish countryside, this approach will likely not work here, Dr Wendt told a conference on pylons in Kilkenny.

EirGrid has said it will “make every effort” to avoid routing overhead lines close to residential areas such as towns, housing estates, and villages.

For standalone homes, the most common type of housing in rural Ireland, it will “seek to achieve a minimum distances of 50m” from the powerline corridor.

EirGrid’s failure to guarantee that a powerline will not run over or closer than 50m from a family home has caused much anger among anti-pylon groups.

Dr Vendt said the best solution on upgrading the country’s electricity supply may be in running part of the €400m Gridlink project underground.

However, he conceded that large tracts will likely have to remain overground due to the ‘branched’ nature of our electricity supply.

Dr Wendt described underground cabling as “maintenance free” once it is put in place, but he added that there was “a limit to the length of DC line that you could run underground” before you would have to run it overground again if you require “branching”.

He agreed with EirGrid that a fully underground DC link would not allow “branching out” to power plants and wind farms.

He said a decision may have to be made by the Government and EirGrid about where they could consider routing the powerline underground and where they have no choice but to run overground.

According to EirGrid, there are plans to build more than 27,000km of overhead lines in Europe over the next 10 years and just 420km of underground cable, due to the limitations of underground lines.