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On 19 July 2016, the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) granted planning approval for the grid project Beznau – Birr. With this decision, the SFOE approved Swissgrid's submission variant 2013 (with pylon 29 in Krähtal) for the overhead line connection to the northern transition structure and turned down four objections.
The existing 220-kV line between Beznau (AG) and Mettlen (LU) represents a bottleneck in the Swiss transmission grid and should therefore be entirely stepped up to a voltage of 380 kV. Concerning the Bözberg/Riniken region («Gäbihübel» area), the Federal Supreme Court ordered in 2011 that a specific partial cabling project is to be elaborated for a length of about one kilometre. The project consists of 1.3 km of partial cabling including transition structures and overhead line connections from mast 20 Rüfenach to Mast 30 in Krähtal to the northern transition structure as well as from the southern transition structure to mast 32 Villnachern to mast 37 (237) Schinznach.
By virtue of law, a complaint period of 30 days will start. If no complaint against the decision is submitted to the Swiss Federal Administrative Court, the approval of the SFOE will become legally effective, and requests for proposals can be issued for the construction work.