Pylon of the Month

There have been higher quality photographs on Pylon of the Month, but July's pylon was snapped out of a train window over Easter and there is always room on the blog for these serendipitous sightings. The train in question was from Naples and this pylon is therefore in the shadow of Vesuvius because I was on the train to Pompei. It's a well known story – the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD buried Pompei and if you haven't been I'd recommend a visit. Once you've done so, I'd also visit (via train with one change) Herculaneum which is much less crowded and by the sea, so very peaceful in a way that the crowded site of Pompei is not. We did both in a reasonably long day which worked for us. 

Anyway, back to the pylon which is part of the 220 kV Erolano-Torre Nord line (thank you again Open Infrastructure map) originating at the 400 MW CCGT Napoli Levante power station. It's a perfectly ordinary looking pylon, very similar to UK pylons but a bit of exploration on the internet led me to an article about new innovative pylon designs (pylons of the future) and the history of electricity transmission in Italy. It's by Terna, "a leading grid operator for energy transmission, being the largest independent grid operator in Europe". Anyway, given that voltage is named after Alessandro Volta, it shouldn't be a surprise that according to the article, he foresaw the idea of electricity tranmission writing in 1777, “the moving spark could be brought from Como to Milan with the wire suspended above ground by wooden poles planted here and there”. Trying to fact check this quote led me to the book, Design of Electrical Transmission Lines, by Sriram Kalaga and Prasad Yenumula which is available here as a pdf. Reading that should keep anyone wanting more pylons in their life busy, at least until August's pylon appears!