To discard a house because it's less than 1 km from pylons

[BananaMamas]

I have tried to research this and there doesn't seem to be any specific advice other than the very minimum distance required for security. I came across an old research suggesting a potential correlation between child leukemia and living less than 1 km away from electricity pylons.
A new house came on the market just now which is in an area we'd consider but right at the border or where we'd stretch to and just under 1 km from pylons. Am I mad to say I don't want to go and see it because of that?

Most the "evidence" gathered was circumstantial and not enough to provide a link at all.

Statistics has a lot to answer for. A little like the whole MMR vaccination and causing autism, which we now know was utter rubbish and one big scientific f*ck up from someone who forgot to include the other factors!

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/electromagnetic-fields-fact-sheet

(I'm a physics nerd and although I wouldn't live within 100m of one as they're noisy, 1 km wouldn't bother me at all).

They can make quite a bit of noise but you wouldn't know the extent unless you go see the house.

My secondary school was right next to pylons in the 80s, no one got leukemia. The buzzing was annoying though!

There is a limit to the amount of electricity each cable can carry.

We are trying to turn all the energy consumption electric. We consume more energy at the moment via other sources than electricity, ie gas for electric heating, petrol for cars etc.

If we are to swap out this energy for electricity, we need more cables to carry the electricity.

I would be more worried about the motorway. How close is that ?

Emissions from roads are going to decrease over time. But you are still going to get diesel particulates from lorries and particles from brakes and tyres.

Right…

I was worried about this as I accepted a (great) spacious council house opposite a pylon (and also a substation at the bottom of my garden for good measure). Tbh it caused me huge anxiety but I had been on the council house list for a decade and we were seriously overcrowded in a flat.

Apparantly standing next to the substation at the bottom of my garden is the equivalent to standing next to a kitchen fridge. Something like that anyway. I don’t think about it anymore and I’m glad we moved here. Hopefully it will be okay.

Marchitectmummy · Today 04:06

Really why? There are electrical connections to all homes in the UK so why would moving to increased supply require more pylons? Pylons are just the structures that hold the electrical feed above ground.

Do they not teach you the basics of this in architect school? They should do because it's something that architects need to factor in to planning and house schemes etc. As has been previously pointed out, electrical cables, no matter how big, have a limited capacity — you can't just run more and more electricity through them. People retro-fitting an air source heat pump or having a large PV array on their property have to get permission from their DNO (District Network Operator) because there's often a limited capacity in the area. Meaning that the overhead cable network can't supply the power required for the heat pump or can't receive any more from your PV array.

The national grid is having to be massively extended and upgraded in order to be able to supply everyone with the electricity they'll need for their all-electric lives, including their electric cars, their electric heat pumps, their electric cooking and heating and so on. And that will involved erecting more pylons to do the heavy lifting. It's preferable to bury the power lines if possible, but much cheaper and less disruptive to take them overground.

@Marchitectmummy there needs to be a huge amount of infrastructure to get us to net zero - also to transfer green energy to energy which can go into the grid. The east coast will get the first wave but it’s coming everywhere.

Just though I'd add this

The Pylon Appreciation Society

Motorway is about 800 mt away

NIMBYism is destroying the UK and is a major reason why we increasingly are not seen as a serious country.

NIMBYism isn’t unique to the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/23/renewable-energy-new-power-lines-for-transmission-risks-concerns

This

Oh, absolutely.

NIMBYism does indeed exist in other countries - and is screwing up productivity in those countries as well.

NIMBYism does seem to be especially bad in English-speaking countries. I have no idea why. Even Ireland has really bad issues with housing shortages (probably because they imported the worst aspects of English planning systems/rules).

I don't think it would bother me, but this isn't the house for you OP. It would always be on your mind.

Far more important is the voltage being carried. National Grid transmits at 400kV and 275kV. The distribution companies transmit at 132kV, 66kV, 33kV and 11kV. 11kV pylons are typically wooden carrying 3 wires. As well as these, the wires on overhead electrified railways are 25kV.

For the highest voltages (National Grid) there are 4,470 miles of overhead transmission and 870 miles underground. Those large pylons heading into large towns and cities end their journey underground so you may be very close to them. They can be as shallow as 1m down.

I would be happy to live three times the height of a pylon away from that pylon, so for a typical national grid 400kV pylon (36m) that's 108m.

If you want to study some technical date see https://www.emfs.info/living-overhead-line/

To summarise
A normal home not near a power line will have a typical magnetic field of 0.1 to 0.2µT in the background and somewhat higher within 1m of an operating appliance. The magnetic field from 400kV transmission lines falls to this level at less than 20m from an underground line and less than 100m from an overhead line. For a 132kV overhead line this distance falls to 25m.
The magnetic field at a distance of 1000m is effectively zero.