Land Issues

Underground cables and overhead lines have significantly different footprints through the countryside when completed. While an overhead line requires a strip around 200 metres wide to be kept permanently clear for safety, maintenance, and repair, an underground cable of the same capacity requires only 10 metres or so.

With appropriate engineering works, such as magnetic shielding, a cable can even safely run under areas such as pedestrian zones with no exposure to external fields.

A recent study by the Swedish National Grid Company (Svenska Kraftnät) showed that a redesign of their grid could bring substantial benefits. By replacing 220kV lines with a mixture of 400kV overhead lines and underground cables, certain lengths of line could be completely eliminated. Benefits of the redesign included:

• Removal of 150km of lines, mostly from populated areas
• 60,000 residents will no longer live within 200 metres of a line
• 5,000 apartments could be built on abandoned rights of way
• Comparing the costs and benefits, for an up-front price of kr3.3B, land with a value of kr2.2B was released for development, potentially covering over 65% of the costs
• If electrical supply quality improvements were included, the benefits of the project covered the total investment costs

Learn more about the Swedish National Grid Company’s grid redesign.