Amersham Field Centre DCNN 4570 – GRIDWATCH?

51.66464 -0.65742 Met Office Rating CIMO Class 4 Installed 1/7/2015 Red Kite marks the station.

“Amersham Main” is a full blown National Grid Transmission Network Sub Station. It runs at 400kV and supplies two 132kV lines into UK Power Networks distribution system. The Met office site is about 10 metres from the perimeter fence. Winds right round from NNW to SSE waft across the Sub Station onto the Screen.

What effect could a close sub station have? Well apart from an unnatural large area of black tarmac and metal, the transformers emit huge quantities of waste heat. Indeed so much that projects to use these as District Heating system “boilers” are in hand. “Nathan Sanders, Managing Director at SSE Energy Solutions, said: “Electric power transformers generate huge amounts of heat as a by-product when electricity flows through them. At the moment, this heat is just vented directly into the atmosphere and wasted. “

https://www.nationalgrid.com/industry-collaboration-turn-power-grid-transformers-heat-network-boilers-can-save-millions-tonnes

My only slightly less detailed research involved picking up my laptop’s 230V, 45W transformer – it was quite hot to the touch – transformer waste heat in action.

Read more: Amersham Field Centre DCNN 4570 – GRIDWATCH?

Similar to the issue regarding solar panels surrounding sites, this co-location with electricity sub stations is not uncommon. The late Tim Channon has already highlighted Bingley No 2.

There are some allegedly pristine Class 1 “record breaker” sites also affected by sub station issues – more to come in future posts on this subject.

My personal view is all that waste heat has to go somewhere. At times it may dissipate vertically upwards and not be an issue but at others it will almost certainly inflate temperature readings taken in such close proximity. Furthermore it does not reflect the natural environment and its data should not be considered for long term climate recording. Another very big concern is why are such questionable locations still being chosen – this site is only nine years old. Is there an agenda going on here?

Surely we deserve better from a £multi million largely tax payer funded government agency.

Any views on this subject and more hard data most welcome. Am I wrong in my view and any evidence to debunk me? Is locating stations in such “hot” locations really accidental?