Unveiling the Power: Behind the Grid | Episode 2: From Shore to Substation

[Music] our lives are powered by electricity and as the world moves forward we're only ever going to need more and this makes the UK's aims of becoming net zero even more challenging so how does all this energy get to our homes and businesses to help power our lives where does it come from and what's being changed to make sure our energy Supply is cleaner and Greener I'm James and I'm on a journey with National Grid to find out just how our electricity transmission system works from all the way out here by the sea to here in our sockets so come and join me as I Venture behind the [Music] grd the UK's electricity grid transports energy all around the country from where it's generated to where it's needed but what I really want to know is how does that electricity get around I know it involves pylons and cables and some things called substations and I'd quite like to know what all that actually means so I've come to dinorwig here in North Wales and rumor has it there's a power station and a substation inside a mountain yeah inside a mountain so I'm on my way to meet Ash who's going to tell us exactly what happens inside electric mountain [Music] Ash thanks for having us here at electric mountain what have we got what are the different layers what's above us what's below us give me the geography give me the map absolutely so we're in a a huge Cavern inside the mountain that was excavated in the early ' 80s and the cabin's got a number of floors in it and actually if there were no floors in the cabin you could fit St Paul's Cathedral inside in here in here absolutely how did they get like literally with shovels and Spades yeah y hand dog removed there have been some um you know and equipment and machines and things and how long did that take from when they started to making the tunnels so it took 10 years to build an orwig all together at the bottom we've got a turbine Hall um and then our substation is on a floor above right I want to see some stuff absolutely what up or down what do you reckon we're going to go up to the substation Flor this way that way right let's go [Music] whoa I feel like I'm on the death St Darth Vader is going to come behind us this really is inside a mountain [Music] lying Ash I'm starting to see why they call it electric mountain now yeah what's actually happening in here as we speak so in here right now this is our 400 KV substation so this is gas insulated switch gear that was uh installed in the early 1980s back to very Basics forgive me a substation what is a substation so this substation is here to connect uh the electric Moun so Den norwi power station so basically we take electricity from the power station and we connect it to the national g grid Network at this substation here and how much power is going through this place at the moment D norwig works is a battery basically this is a giant battery how does that work so um Mountain has a a lake at the top and a lake at the bottom um and literally the lake at the top acts like a battery so we we the power station pump water up into that Lake um and that is potential energy so that water is stored at the top um and then when we need it they open valves they run that water through turbine um and to generate electricity and how many homes you know at its peak capacity could displace power it's hundreds of thousands of homes to know it can be supplying you know a time sort of 5% of the electricity for the whole of the UK the whole of the UK the whole of the UK from the mountain from the mountain you'd hope so from a mountain wouldn't you so Ash how many substations like this are there in the UK so there are not many substations like this but we have over 300 substations in the UK so this is a gas insulated substation so what does that mean so that is different to a lot of our substations in that it's uh the insulation medium is sulf hexa fluoride or sf6 okay and that means that it is uh we can we can install it in very very compact place and we can actually touch it that's that's the gas insulation so that is g that's a piece of gas insulated Buzz bar and inside there is a live conductor when you say we can touch it do you mean I can touch it we can touch that absolutely so we go oh together it'll be like ET oh it's kind of vibrating I we've shared a moment here Ash no no so inside of there there is a a live conductor at 4 400,000 BTS and that's going yeah I'm glad you told me that after I touched it yeah so a normal subst obviously would be outside and it would be air insulated yeah my climate background tells me gas probably isn't the greatest thing in the world for the planet that's right are you doing anything to kind of correct that we will be replacing the sub station so that we'll have almost 90% reduction of the gas that we've got here at the minute so we have about there's about 11,000 kilos of gas sf6 in in this uh substation we're able to reduce that by 90% wow that's huge absolutely massive yeah yeah and how many people have you looking after this place on a normal day we'll have only one or two people here uh but when we've got maintenance works or if we've got um you know uh fault repair Works say we can we can Peak at you know 20 or 30 members of Staff it's real engineering work and this equipment you know was is 40 years old you know so we've we've got um uh we had to call in Specialists you know people who um were here when the when the substation was built um and we've got equipment and tools that you know we've had to maintain and keep literally from from the day this place was was built uh tools that we might not have used for 20 years wow so you mentioned the mountain renovation which I'm sure is not a small task Ash is this the bit that's being replace so we'll be replacing the whole substation okay but we can't switch it all off at once so we have to do it in stages so this is going to be the first stage that we replace and how do you get this out of a mountain section by section this will be taken out um lowered down uh on the lift on the crane that's above us uh and taken out and the new equipment will be brought in I thought it was hard work renovating my house yeah how are you going to do that absolutely it's a real Logistics challenge absolutely and and especially because the rest of the substation is going to be live it was going to ask that so can will it still produce power even though you're getting rid of this bit this bit will be dead and disconnected but the good thing about our network is that it's really resilient so we we we design in lots of redundancy um and that redundancy helps us to do this way we can take parts of it off switch it off work on it safely and have the live bits of the sub station still buzzing away over there [Music] this is where you come and reflect on all the amazing work you've done absolutely yeah you see the whole substation it's quite some view isn't it it it's it's a great view yeah does that ever get old no doesn't get old at all no and you know we talked a little bit about what you guys are doing here to bring this up to 21st century standards but in terms of the great grid upgrade how important is a site like this for what you're trying to do sites like this and sites uh you know across the country really really important we've got a huge amount amount of offshore wind about to connect you know across the next 10 years um batteries other novel types of generation so you know upgrading our Network upgrading our overhead lines and cables to take all that new infrastructure is really really important yeah because that transition to Net Zero sometimes can feel like a really far away thing yeah are you confident that we can get there absolutely absolutely so you know we've made huge strides over the last 10 years our power system is the fastest decarbonizing power system uh in Europe there's a long way to go but we've made you know huge stdes over the last few years and to you personally Ash I mean you know is that something that's close to your heart upgrading the network connecting that new generation is is really important to not only decarbonize the power system but also to make our to make it much more secure uh much more much more reliable and and you know reduce uh reduce costs for for for the consumer and it's particularly important for the the Next Generation as well isn't it because you know for kids and absolutely they're kind of at the the center of this aren't they really the next 10 years you know a vast amount of our current Workforce retires so it's really important that we Inspire children to get into stem subjects and and to you know follow those subjects through and come into our apprenticeship programs our engineering programs those schemes are open at the minute for uh for recruitment um we bring you in you we take you to our training center we put you up in a in lovely warm accommodation we feed you and we train you and teach you to come and look after this you didn't give me that same luxury how many people do you need to hire to to keep that transition going to Net Zero is there a number of people that we need it's vast amounts of Engineers I mean I don't think we could probably put a number on it but it's it's just really important that the next generation are inspired to to come into engineering jobs here there are Engineers but I guess you need people that aren't you know it's not just Engineers is it that's is it is a really diverse Workforce and you know we have we have lawyers we have ecologists we have people who specialize in flooding we have people who um specialize in recr Mar social media absolutely so it's yeah it's it's a great place and you can come in as come in as an engineer and leave as an accountant you know it's it's it's a great place maybe that's what happen to me maybe I have a different job when I go home at the end of this absolutely and then for you personally what do you love about this so much so there's a saying at National Grid people generally come for Net Zero yeah but they stay for the people it's a great team everyone looks out for each other and we're all really really passionate about what we do and achieving that are you hopeful for our trans to agree in a future absolutely I I wouldn't be if I [Music] wasn't so we are now in the cable tunnels James wow so next to us here is a live 400 KV oil filled cable that's live this is live right on we go that's right oh my gosh so what's how much power is going through these right now so so the each of these uh cable circuits and this there two of them currently can take full output of the of the generator he's there absolutely look how close you are to it and you can touch this as well no don't do it oh God I'm not doing that I'll Trust you oh my gosh that's amazing so you're responsible for a lot of people Ash on site here how does that feel it's it's a it's a huge responsibility um not only for them and and and their safety but also for the you know the the amount of the transmission system that we' got to look after and uh keep safe and keep in service Okay so at this point here this is where the two cable circuits meet they come together so we've been in the number two tunnel and this is the number one tunnel here where the where the cables cables come around um so yeah they're both both buried in concrete here with a with a concrete plant separated I cannot get this out of my mind this is all hand built allil everything someone actually dug this you can actually see um on the wall there you can see the drill marks you can see see the see the lines where that would have been a drill bit as they would have been Excavating this face it just blows moment I cannot over that amazing isn't it yeah and it feels like we're very much alone down here but that's not the case is it we are now um but there was a time when we might not have been so um so there are a horseshoe bats used to come down into this tunnel at the end of the tunnel um we've had to install some um like chain mail and and a bat house to encourage the bats to stay at the top of the tunnel because we can't disturb them so because that that particular pie is are protected aren't they they are protected so you you take that really seriously absolutely take that really seriously when you took this job did you realize you were not only doing this but also looking after some bats bats great CED NES water balls really you name it yeah yeah we look after them definitely I didn't so there's loads of wildlife in here so not in the tunnel but our projects you know span you know the whole of the country so whenever you're working I'm particularly working in you know very beautiful parts of the of the country you know you have to got to look after the environment are we that's it I've seen everything I need to see inside that's it yeah so the way to get out about 3/4 of a mile that way I'm walking towards the bats towards the bats I'm walking towards the bats [Music] so there you go substations or electricity from power generators so things like turbines or solar panels or even electric mountains is converted and rooted into overhead lines and underground cables where it's sent all across the country and distribution networks bring into our homes and businesses and I've just found out there's over 22,000 pylons and over 4,500 mil of overhead lines that help do this on the transmission system that's a lot of infrastructure to keep tabs on so I want to find out a little bit more about how that's maintained and looked after [Music] onwards I'm here in the muddiest field we could find actually between I think Northampton Shear that way and buck shears that way in the United Kingdom to meet a guy called Chris who works for National Grid he hangs out of helicopters and does something with p pons and cables we're going to find out more you must be Chris to meet you I'm James to meet James thanks for talking to us no problem and your natural habitat CHR home from home so well Chris we find you in familiar territory in front of these pylons can you tell us a little bit about how you fit into this infrastructure your role in the National Grid my current role is uh specialist access and Technology engineer specialist access that sounds fun it sounds like you've got some sort of triaa pass to get you back back stage at the National Grid what does that actually mean normal access you sort of climb up the step leg on the actual Tower itself yeah the specialist access bit we use helicopters or rope access the Tom Cruz division could say that we suspend a basket with uh two people in it under the helicopter and actually fly onto the conductors themselves so kind of you're like hanging out of it hanging underneath it w about 30 to 50 m beneath it and we access the uh spaces the conductors carrying out repairs replacing B do you get scared um no I haven't been so you don't get scared anymore cuz you what you doing it I guess a long time yeah yeah yeah I've been involved in National Grid for 36 years I joined at 16s and Apprentice straight from school um always been involved in overhead lines as overhead line craft person what does that mean what does that mean which one's the overhead line overhead line well the overhead line and the tower the wires all encompasses that so for 20 years I worked basically building pylon maintaining them replacing all the assets that hang off the pylons how do you know what you're supposed to be fixing and repairing well the the helicopter unit they all identify the defects it gets fed back into the defect management team and they then filter it down to the operations team to actually go out and actually uh do carry out the repair so when you're in the basket hanging out the helicopter what a great sentence how long are you actually in there for generally 20 minutes so the helicopter unit is one part of the special access that you work on what are some of the other special access parts that you have the the other part is all rope access so it's AB sailing much like you do in sort of goape sort of or indoor sort of environment we we actually use that on these towers as well so where does this might be a silly question where does it where does the Rope like from the top to the bottom kind of thing yeah you get yourself up to the top and you Abell down to check what's happening yes so on these these sorts of towers we probably very rarely use a specialist access we use a specialist the Rope AIS side of things on more unusual Towers um the te pylon is a perfect example where we probably will end up using some form of rope access yeah it's all new so it's we're all trying to sort of invent new things and come up with different ideas how we can access things is that part of your role as well trying to find out kind of invent new ways of getting to stuff basically yeah well it's it's equipment and coming up with new access methods let's talk pylons be R don't to have you got a favorite pylon a favorite series of pylons that you worked on proud of the favorite thing I've ever done is probably when we refurbish the seven crossing which are 450t river Crossings down near Bristol um for me that was one of my biggest achievements CU I had to design a completely new rig to replace the insulators and we had nothing to actually try it on oh wow yeah what did that feel like when it when it work presuming it works it's a relief so there's a lot more to your role than just hanging out of a helicopter yes yeah it's a fantastic place to work I just love the environment I travel the country different place every day the office is different every day um fantastic bunch of people I work with the over line teams the camaraderie and for people that sort of watch this and go oh I'm 16 I'm 17 I'm at that stage where I want to look at apprenticeships it's on the national g careers page they're actually recruiting at the moment I think we talking 10 apprentices every year for the next five years so it's huge opportunities all over the country for sort of youngsters to come in you think of these things you think of like engineering and big Tech do you have to have that background or is that something you can learn it's all taught during the apprenticeship so that you're bought as 16 17 year old and you taught everything you need to know during your apprenticeship You Come Away with your qualifications at the end of it as well tell me Chris about the great grid upgrade and particularly the role of Net Zero and how important that is is really all about um creating more capacity on a network I think there's something around 50 50 gaws of extra power that's going to be um required to be flowed down through the National Grid over the next 20 years I think of renewable energy yes so how long is that going to take are we talking sort of short-term long-term it it's going to be short term and the target the company working to is 2030 which is a massive undertaking with the amount of infrastructure build that's got to be put in place within that's only six years now isn't it Chris I know you do way more than hang out of a helicopter but that's all I can think about and I I need to meet the people responsible to help you with that can we meet the helicopter team yeah yeah yeah let's uh go and find John and I'll introduce you to him this way [Music] okay right Chris we got someone else for me now yeah this is uh John rby our chief pilot John John nice to meet you mate James see nice to see you yeah you will thank you so much lovely to see you from the man that he hangs out of these that's right normally see each other in the same plane I was going to ask you what you do but there's a a fairly large clue behind us yeah so um so I'm the chief pilot of the National Grid transmission helicopter unit and Doug is one of The Observers in the back so this is a Bell full ton 29 helicopter and we've got two of these and they're the kind of primary Workhorse um to gener lots of imagery of towers and we feed that to the condition monitoring team who then look at when the things need refurbishing what is a high priority defect what can be left and refurbished at a later date so your job is to sort of fly around and make sure all the pylons are as they should be uh yeah I think it's it's really a a very comprehensive health check um very up close and personal with the pylons in in the hover a lot of the time how close are we talking like well yeah our minimum is about 50 ft oh God but um this this camera here on on the front this is a sort of military grade camera wow and it'll do thermal mode it's got a very capable zoom lens so you can get some very high resolution pictures a lot of buttons I'm sh you know what all these do basically flight displays here engine displays there mapping displays there little bit more buttons autopilot but it's a fully um instrument rated machine as well so we can fly in Cloud to get to uh to places so that's quite handy sometimes it's a very modern helicopter so that's that's a nice thing it's got some really interesting uh latest avionics really good autopilot so we can that's good it's very comfortable it's very vibration free it's an excellent platform for what we do very stable uh it's quite good in the wind as well um wind does tend to affect us quite a bit and this is nice stable uh platform so it's it's a joy to fly really we're very lucky to to have these machines yeah can we go absolutely we're ready to go we're fully filled you're waiting for me the weather's fine yeah the sun's just come out TW grid is there a one requesting start hang 7 we 5 p and 4 a eastly [Music] departure and the weather is looking good for our transit to Tower ZL 311 I mean it's a gorgeous evening it is Lovely isn't it this is this is like Peak helicopter time is it it's a good first time to come in helicopter but you've got nice conditions how much land do you cover you said there's two helicopters so this one and a sort of a twin are you covering the whole country well it's England Wales at the moment for the uh National Grid transmission uh so we do get around quite a bit we're a very um nomadic uh unit we have all our luggage in the back uh and we we rather than coming back to our our base each time we'll actually go to where the work is uh and then maybe stay over not in hotel so the guys are used to living out of a bag really in hotels so it can be quite um a lot of time from home each day we're trying to do about 5 hours worth of flying 2 and 1 half hours in the morning 2 and 1 half hours in the afternoon so You' got to concentrate for that long the observer in the back has got to make sure he's keeping his concentration levels up because he's looking at footage he's got to maybe spot a small defect um you know even though he might be seeing you know 50 60 towers that day that he's inspecting so it's requires pretty high concentration levels okay I think I can see 311 so position into win Sunny Side give you the best possible pictures okay off my left here is the uh the pylon oh yeah there it is very nice uh oh wow look at that yeah look at that on the screen you can see it's the zl3 W that's the one okay so I'm just going to get my uh digital camera out taking a whole series of pictures working up the tower this is Doug one of our observers lovely to meet you I'm James hi James pleas to meet you this is your office this is my office wow it's like a games console yeah yeah pretty much so I've got my controller for the camera here yeah this is the uh AVX recorder so it basically records all the video oh everything that's okay y handy and uh and then uh obviously the screen and then I've got a couple of iPads one running the mapping have a look yeah sure oh oh that is that's not just a Google Maps that's oh no no no this so we can we can zoom out and we've got all the airspace and and what have you on that tells you where the pylons are does it it does indeed we've got an overlay on it so I can zoom in and get the exact ident on a Pyon I can't get the Pyon map of my phone can I no no and then um the other iPads got the tracker we we have a a Tracker system so that each tower that we film we color code it according to whether we've been able to record the details or whether we've had to uh bypass it because of horses or property or something like that so what are you looking for in these pylons what what are you hoping to see what are you hoping not to see when you're looking through the camera sure so we've got three different surveys that we do so the first one is with uh steel work and I've got uh a digital camera uh with a big zoom lens on it so I literally sit in the back open up the window and then I take thousands and thousands of pictures every day actually open the window yeah just at this side here you like pile on Paparazzi on you basically yeah we'll take anywhere sort of up to 2,000 pictures a day what you do with them at the end uh they get analyzed by a team so we got a set sequence to we follow because you can imagine doing this day in day out what you don't want to do is lose track of where you are that's all looking pretty good can I tell you a secret do I'm trying so hard to con what you're saying but I'm absolutely terrified are you really what's so frightening about this I mean what could possibly go wrong we use the uh uh daylight camera on the MX the B one you seen uh so we're looking I'm looking at all the fixtures there and fittings on the pylons so the the shackles the nuts the bolts the split pins for wear and tear and damage in general and then the last one which we're doing during the winter months is that we do infrared patrols so we're looking for hot joints on the angled Towers that's sort of an indication that the The Joint isn't as it should be there's a there's a bit of resistance there and we we get the Heat Signature that me someone has to go up and fix it see 11 o00 James you might be able to see that today the sub station so we've got a bit of sun on the uh substation at the moment which makes it really difficult to work out what's what's a hot joint what's Reflection from the Sun yeah but you can see that the uh Transformers are really glowing nice and hot there so they're working on they're working they're working how many I'm going to quiz you now how many sub stations are there you oh oh good question actually have you seen them all I've seen every single one of them oh that's all they don't all terminate with overhead lines so we tend to see about 240 I know there's something like 22,000 towers that we look at have you got a favorite route favorite area I think uh around for me it's the um round the snowdonia route there's a lovely route from conis Key round to canavan and then back to tr fth so that's really lovely there's a route that goes from carile across to Newcastle nice and it follows hen's wall and it is just fantastic yeah it's really good scenery beautiful you wouldn't get that view anywhere else would you no no every time you see a pile on from now on you're going to remember this every time I turn my phone on and I've charged it at night I'm going to be like D's up there making sure that's okay absolutely it's quite sens it's very sensitive look at that oh my gosh you made this look so easy I feel like you remember the first time you played a PlayStation you're rubbish so we want that bit there that bit there that's the opposite what hang on go left a bit and down a bit so it's like an airplane not like a PlayStation yeah I'm figuring that out yeah this is quite good it's distracting me from thinking about where we actually are good John how did you get into all this it's one of the more unusual jobs in National grd isn't it I wasn't expecting to find a helicopter yeah I spent 20 years in the Air Force flying shinook helicopters on various operations uh double double bladed ones yeah that's right yeah the intermeshing rotors which uh was quite sporty but um we we spent a lot of time at low level and then I left the Air Force I joined an air ambulance and again more time at low level and then a job with National Grid came up and again it was more time spent in the low level operating environment it seemed quite well suited so uh you know it's been it's been a really good uh good career move to come here working for National Grid it's really enjoyable and National Grid a great company to work for so um it's it's just nice to fly on aircraft with with National Grid on the side you know it's great my previous employment was as a police officer and I spent 20 years on the police helicopters and cut my teeth on the cameras uh doing that so looking at very different kinds of things i' imagine yeah totally yeah and then you enjoy looking more at the pylons perhaps than uh yeah I mean the pylons don't run away for me so it's great let's hope not I think it's amazing that all of this stuff exists and no one really thinks about it here you guys are making sure it's all working so that I can go home and B my cattle to yeah and and a lot of this kit has been around since the 50s some of the pylons are still standing from back from the 50s and 60s they're still that good good engineering well done G yeah absolutely ice buy some with PE give you a clue there James a pelic a pelic no proba not could it be a p could be could be no I haven't seen many of those today no no no not at all I'm in the market for all right guys you can unstrap and open doors and uh go about your business but thanks for flying National good Airways Doug John thank you for letting me fly National Grid Airways prob the food it was an amazing trip it honest seeing what you guys do and it's so simple I'm going to go home and make a cup of tea and when I flick that switch on I'll I'll think of you flying high above the pylons at one last question can I have a ride home casual check yeah no expensive next time see you [Laughter] [Music] boys high voltage electricity is moving through these overhead lines and underground cables and they sort of shuttle between substations which have died across the whole country it's incredible operation and one that requires constant monitoring maintenance upgrading and much more but there is another element to our electricity git because the electricity flowing through these overhead lines and underground cables is a really high voltage and well you need to convert that otherwise your cattle will blow up and your TV would short circuit so the real question is how does it get from here to our sockets but first I need a come [Music]