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- Hacker News
- 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.
by itronitron - 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...
by Animats - If the proposal gets accepted, would they need to construct additional pylons?by xeonmc
- Trying to make them look interesting is a bad idea, tried numerous times in the past. The best a designer can do is to make them disappear and not draw your eye. Trying to make them look interesting generally isn't the way to go. It's been tried and abandoned in California and numerous other places. I'd add some citations, but most writing about transmission lines is internal to the companies building and maintaining them. You can't make them into a beautiful sculpture because you ultimately need their utility of supporting the conductors, and that hardware is difficult to make aesthetically pleasing.
- 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.by cma
- Austria has a long tradition of making infrastructure attractive: from railway stations to electric substations.
- Apologies for raining on anyone's parade, but this is nothing more than concept art.by logifail
- 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?
by next_xibalba - > Let's hope we get these in the U.S.
This is concept art, no more, no less.
by logifail - Yes, the author Kamrin Baker is clearly trying to fool readers into believing they're already installed. The "photo" captions are particularly misleading.by foxglacier
- For now, it‘s just a potential concept. Article in German: https://futurezone.at/digital-life/strommasten-hirsch-stoch-...by qwertz123
- 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.by mips_avatar
- Something similar was previously proposed in Iceland
https://grapevine.is/news/2015/10/16/these-human-shaped-pylo...
by flaboonka - At least the version you linked look buildable, they don't have huge unsuported parts like the wings of the bird.by gus_massa
- In Estonia a couple have been built.
https://balticguide.ee/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Soorebane-...
by jnsaff2 - The "Bog Fox" is a great design for a corner pylon, but it is a one-off.[1] Too bad it's not widely used for corner pylons, which tend to be ugly due to extensive bracing.
[1] https://www.archdaily.com/956755/pylon-bog-fox-landmark-part...
by Animats - 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.
by ishtanbul - > 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).
by thomasmg - 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.
by fweimer - 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.by petre
- The rule of thumb is that if there's a mention of or a link to the Yanko Design website, you know it's a pipe-dream design concept detached from reality.
Here it features the review by YD, so, yeah, that's not just not built, it's not buildable in principle :)
by abcd_f - 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).
by seszett - 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.
by Jolter