Austria: Pylons as sculpture for public acceptance of expanding electrification
35 comments
·October 28, 2025fweimer
Jolter
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
The caption even more so "Photo courtesy of GP designpartners" - if this is not actually a photo.
seszett
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).
logifail
> 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 :/
wongarsu
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
> 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.
lostlogin
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.
petre
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
Please could you explain this? Does burying them effect performance or it’s just the added cost of a mega trench?
petre
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.
ishtanbul
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
> 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).
mips_avatar
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.
Animats
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...
itronitron
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.
postepowanieadm
Austria has a long tradition of making infrastructure attractive: from railway stations to electric substations.
logifail
Apologies for raining on anyone's parade, but this is nothing more than concept art.
lostlogin
I’m not sure it’s attractive either.
It’s better than a pylon but worse than a clear skyline.
logifail
> 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.
aramattamara
Have they tried burying the cables? Yes, it's more expensive, but if they care so much about the views...
robjeiter
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.
earthnail
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.
nixass
> If only Austria would do nuclear
Now you're just talking crazy.
People, we have crazy over here
/s
flaboonka
Something similar was previously proposed in Iceland
https://grapevine.is/news/2015/10/16/these-human-shaped-pylo...
next_xibalba
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
For now, it‘s just a potential concept. Article in German: https://futurezone.at/digital-life/strommasten-hirsch-stoch-...
foxglacier
Yes, the author Kamrin Baker is clearly trying to fool readers into believing they're already installed. The "photo" captions are particularly misleading.
logifail
> Let's hope we get these in the U.S.
This is concept art, no more, no less.
cma
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.
jnsaff2
In Estonia a couple have been built.
https://balticguide.ee/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Soorebane-...
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.