Human-like pylons, used for electricity transmission in Iceland? Find Out the Truth…

Various countries use varying methods for electricity generation as well as power/electricity transmission across the country. In this backdrop, we noticed viral social media posts claiming that human-like pylons were being used in Iceland to carry the electricity across the country. However, our investigation proves these claims are misleading.

Social Media Posts

A Facebook user posted a few photos claiming to be how human-like pylons were being used to carry electricity across Iceland as seen below.

Facebook| Archived

We noticed a number of other posts with similar claims using the same set of images being shared among Facebook users as well.

Due to the curious nature of these posts, we decided to carry out an investigation over these claims.

Fact Check

At first we did a Google Reverse Image Search and were able to find the source of these photos. These photos were actually taken from the web page of an architecture company named “CHOI SHINE”.

These digitally generated conceptual images were used by that company for a project/proposal named, “Land of Giants”. These photos can be clearly seen in the CHOI SHINE webpage and on their social media handles.

Web| Archived

We searched for more details about this proposed project. The project proposal was made by CHOI SHINE company in a design competition, which was held by Landsnet , the organization that provides electric facilities to Iceland. The design competition for designs of towers/pylons that were having minimal impact on the environment and mitigating the harmful effects of electric and magnetic fields was held in 2008. And the proposal won a “recognition award” in this competition. However, even in 2015, the Landsnet organization had not implemented the design of award-winning proposal “Land of Giants” for carrying the electricity throughout Iceland. The marketing manager of the Landsnet said to grapevine magazine of Iceland that they had not decided whether to implement the project or not. Details about this story can be found here.Archived.

We did an investigation to see whether this concept had really been implemented in Iceland since then. As we were unable to find any evidence about the implementation of this project in Iceland, to get further clarifications about the current status we wrote to Landsnet and CHOI SHINE Companies and they confirmed that the human-like pylons project had not been built thus far in Iceland and those social media claims were misleading.In a mail to us CHOI SHINES' representative James Wellnut delivered the below statement.

“The Giants were created for Iceland in 2008 and later for several international power and transmission companies, including in Iceland, France, Norway, The United States, Canada and elsewhere. The Giants have been designed and engineered, but not yet constructed. “

The fact checks done by other institutes on this can be reached from here and here.Archived.Archived.

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Conclusion:According to our investigation, we were able to find out that the photos of viral social media claiming to be human-like pylons being used to transmit electricity in Iceland were misleading. The images were digitally generated conceptual images for the project “Land of Giants” and are not real images of human-like pylons in Iceland. Also, the electricity infrastructure provider, Landsnet, and CHOI SHINE, the architectural company who proposed these concept images confirmed to us that the “Land of Giants” project has not yet been implemented in Iceland.