A truly beautiful mind: The radical engineer TGN Haldane, 1897-1981 (Part 1 of 2)

This is the story of one of Britain’s greatest if least known engineers who:

• Tested one of the world’s first heat pumps in the 1920s. This was around the same time that his cousin, a famous biologist, became one of the first to speculate about the widespread use of hydrogen in energy.

• Wrote the textbook on electricity distribution grid design in the 1920s

• Was a major contributor to the first ever National Grid in the 1930s

• Drove nationalisation from within the industry in the 1940s, becoming an intellectual sparring partner to prominent socialists and politicians

• Was a key player in the development of the 275kV ‘SuperGrid’ between 1940 and 1950

• Developed remarkably modern ideas on wind generation, hydro-electric, pumped storage, flexibility, nuclear and subsea interconnectors in the 1940s to 1960s.

Thomas Graeme Nelson Haldane’s life (1897-1981) is a bit like the film Forest Gump but reimagined around the history of electricity in Britain. He was involved in some way in most of the major developments between 1920 and 1970. On top of that Haldane was a remarkable political economist, and the anonymous author of one of the most eloquent pamphlets arguing for a socialist energy system. Throughout his life he embraced radicalism in all he did.

This blog will be in two parts because Haldane’s life is too remarkable for one. Part 1 follows Haldane from his training to the nationalisation of the electricity industry in 1948. Part 2 will cover his role in the 275kV ‘SuperGrid’, wind and hydroelectric power, and his remarkable intellectual sensibilities.

We need to rediscover our giants and their shoulders

I have been investigating Haldane for about a year. But now seems like a very good time to write about him. In recent weeks the energy sector has gone into overdrive. In the rush to provide answers to Labour’s mission to deliver a net zero power system by 2030, the industry has done what it does best; churn out tons of reports and white papers. All are very well meaning. But I am always left with a distinct sense of déjà vu. Mission 2030 will require ‘whole system thinking’, ‘collaboration’, ‘strategic decision making’, ‘decisive action’, ‘roadmaps for delivery’, ‘detailed delivery plans’ and ‘collaboration between the public and private sector’. The language is that of a corporate transformation. Sadly, many of these reports pull their punches when it comes to the trickier questions of political economy.

Take for example the much-applauded report by the Royal Society of Engineers Rapid decarbonization of the GB electricity system. It starts with a bold statement: ‘Physical delivery of the system we need is fundamentally an engineering challenge that needs the highest levels of political and engineering leadership, alongside significant co-investment from the public and private sectors.’ By the end of the report, I was left feeling like I didn’t really know what that meant anymore. Despite containing some good ideas, the report takes very few points to a logical conclusion. The report says Britain needs a ‘digitally enabled system’ so the public can ‘engage with the system more flexibly, benefiting the grid and saving consumers and government money’ (p.1). Does engaging mean responding to price signals or something else? The report says, ‘market mechanisms will be essential to unlocking the flexibility of the system’ (p.21), but then doesn’t take a view on how electricity markets should work. This is a staggering omission. Elsewhere the report recommends that Britain should keep ‘a reserve of schedulable energy to switch on when demand peaks’ (p.20). Is this just an extension of today’s capacity market? Or are we talking about a state-owned reserve? On connections, the report suggests that a ‘more radical process would… repopulate the queue on the basis of strategic need according to the NESO [National Energy System Operator] strategic plan’ (p.17). The authors note this might infringe on the ‘property rights’ of projects currently in the queue. But the report completely ducks this as ‘a legal and political issue outside the scope of this report’. The triumph of consulting speak is manifest. All transformations end up in a debate about what is ‘in scope’.

We are never going to net zero if we avoid grappling with some very old questions in the political economy of energy. Questions about market design and incentive; the role of the state; the extent of state ownership; what is paid for via bills vs general taxation; the power given to planners. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Our forebears have reckoned with these questions before. Whilst reflecting on that won’t give us the answers it will make us wiser. (And hopefully a little humbler when we describe something as ‘transformational’ when it might not be). What follows is the story of one of Britain’s greatest if least known engineers. A man who proves that driving an energy transition means embracing radicalism in engineering, politics and economics.

Figure 1: Thomas Graham Nelson Haldane, 1897-1981, who I think bore an uncanny resemblance to the actor Paul Higgins (or ACC Derek Hilton in Line of Duty).

TGN Haldane: Pioneer of the heat pump and electric revolutionary

Early years and Europe’s Silicon Valley of electricity.

TGN Haldane was born in Edinburgh on the 14^th December 1897. At age 19 the tumultuous nature of the times dragged him into war. He became a midshipman on the HMS Vanguard and fought in the Battle of Jutland. An engineering prodigy from this early age, he became Sub Lieutenant on HMS Tiger where he devised an electrical rangefinder on the Wheatstone Bridge principle using the ship’s length as the base. The idea was praised by Admiral Beaty but it wasn't developed and was superseded by the radar. In 1919 the Navy released Haldane to go study physics at Trinity College Cambridge. Then he spent two years at the Cavendish Laboratory where he studied economics under Sir Edward Appleton. It was at Cavendish that Haldane met the great economist John Maynard Keynes.

With his training in political economy and engineering completed in 1925 (age 27) Haldane moved to Newcastle to join the engineering consultancy Merz and McLellan. He started off on an apprenticeship with Charles Parsons, inventor of the steam turbine and a man fascinated by geo-thermal (something Haldane inherited). In the first two decades of the 20^th century Britain’s electricity industry lagged many other western countries. Excessive competition had led to a fragmented system, with thousands of private and municipal electricity supply companies operating over sub optimal small patches. Generation stations were too small. There was no real transmission network. Every city represented a patchwork quilt of overlapping operations with different standards. It was a mess (for more on that see my other blog). But there was one exception; the Northeastern Electric Supply Company (NESCo), founded in 1889. Haldane had moved to Europe’s electrical Silicon Valley.

One of the driving forces behind NESCo’s success was the firm Merz and McLellan, set up by Charles Merz whose father Theodore had founded NESCo. Merz and his colleague William McLellan were visionary engineers. They developed a system around scale, standardisation, diversity of demand and interconnection. In 1901 they commissioned the Neptune Bank Power Station which had the lowest generating costs in Britain and was the world's first power station to provide electricity for industry as opposed to lighting. It was also the first in Britain to use a three-phase system. After that followed Dunstone in 1910 and Carville ‘B’ in 1916. Carville held the record as the most efficient power station in the world for many years. These stations fed into a 66kV transmission network, which supplied a 1,400 square mile area. Generation was a mix of hard coal and waste heat from the region's many blast furnaces and coke ovens. Merz modelled NESCo on the system that Samuel Insull had developed in Chicago. Indeed, the two were friends and colleagues. The business strategy was simple; drive down cost via scale, standardise and link up diverse forms of load (lighting, industry, tramways and refrigeration), improve the load factor, reduce prices, thereby building further scale. By 1912 NESCo was the largest integrated power system in Europe.

Figure 2: Characteristics of NESCo in 1923. Source: Hughes Networks of Power

Designing the first National Grid.

Haldane flourished at Merz and McLellan. Just one year into the job he made his first major contributions to engineering. In 1927 he co-wrote a paper with JR Beared titled ‘the design of city distribution systems and the problem of standardisation’. In it the pair described how to build a three phase four wire alternating current system. It became a classic design manual for distribution engineers for decades. Reading the paper I was struck by déjà vu. The argument is extremely similar to the way people (e.g. Bent Flyberg in How Big Things Get Done) talk about ‘standardised’ and ‘modular’ infrastructure today. Haldane and Beard argued ‘a large urban area will have the following essential features: Energy will be delivered from generating stations as three-phase at 50 cycles to a transmission system feeding a limited number of “main substations” from which will be distributed at numerous “transforming centres” feeding low-voltage networks from which supplies will be given to consumers’. But it wasn’t one size fits all. The pair carefully laid out four ‘archetypes’ of the system for different areas based on a few characteristics. Their real genius was to spot the need to build the ‘standard’ grid so it could be easily adapted as electrical load grew. It would be much easier to deal with increased load by ‘adding transforming centers rather than by strengthening up the cable network’. Figure 2 shows Haldane’s sketch of how this would work.

Figure 2: Haldane and Beard’s 1926 ‘Diagram showing standard low-voltage network and method of expanding its capacity as load increases’. The additional transforming centers and cables at each stage shown as dotted.

At the same time as writing the textbook on distribution, Haldane supported Charles Merz on the development of the first transmission ‘National Grid’ (see my other blog). Like Tesla, Eddison, Westinghouse, Rooke, Hinton and many others, Charles Merz was a passionate advocate of his system. In the early 1900s Merz waged a campaign to take over and rationalise the London electricity system. The attempt failed due to a mix of parochialism, entrenched interests and political horse-trading. Undeterred, Merz doggedly fought for ‘rationalisation’ of the national electricity system through the 1910s. In 1925 Merz and McLellan supported the Weir Commission which led to the foundation of the Central Electricity Board in 1926.  The Board would construct and operate a new 132kV ‘National Grid’. It would then buy power from the largest power stations, creating a more efficient interconnected national system. Haldane was one of the consulting engineers on the project. For the plan to work, it required standardising the bewildering range of voltages and frequencies across the nation. Hence why Haldane’s meticulous work on standardisation was so important. 

Britain’s first ever heat pump.

In 1927 Haldane decided he needed another challenge and started to work on heat pumps. Perhaps he was inspired by the innovative use of waste heat in the Tyne area or perhaps was hoping to step out of the shadow of Charles Merz. Haldane relocated to his family home on the Foswell Estate, Aucterarder, Perthshire and constructed a heat pump. The environmental heat source was the estate’s water supply, derived from groundwater springs. At aged 30 Haldane became the first engineer in Britain, and possibly the world, to construct and scientifically test a heat pump for space heating.

Figure 3: The heat pump system installed at Haldane’s home, 1930.

Just one year later, in 1928, he submitted his results to the Institute for Electrical Engineers. In 1930 the results were published in a paper with the unremarkable title ‘The Heat Pump – An economical method of producing low-grade heat from electricity’. You can download it from the IET Digital Library for just £13 here. I implore you to do so. It is stunning. Haldane had clearly picked up Charles Merz’s flair for communication; an ability to explain the essence of technology and economics to the non technically trained.

Haldane’s argument will be spookily familiar to anyone in the energy industry today. He started by explaining the basic science and that the ‘most familiar type of heat pump is the refrigerator’. He described the basic components; the electric motor, compressor, evaporator and condenser. Then he compared the round-trip efficiency of his test pump vs various tests in the USA. He calculated a ‘Coefficient of Production’ of between 2.7 – 5.0, and concluded that ‘an alternative method of using the heat pump [would be] heating large buildings, and one very well adapted to the characteristics of the heat pumps’. An economist and an engineer, Haldane compared the cost of heating a swimming bath with coal vs a heat pump and showed the latter would save 30% on cost per annum. Haldane even saw that one of the bonuses of the heat pump is the ability of ‘the system to be reversed and the building cooled in hot weather’, which could extend to the manufacture of ice. In a mind-blowing sentence, he even came up with the concept of demand side flexibility:

‘Although… a heat pump installation would not obtain power entirely during off-peak hours, it would not be difficult to avoid turning the plant during the worst hour of peak load, so obtaining a supply of power at a comparatively low cost for this reason’

Haldane’s paper received broad support in a discussion at the Institute. He countered the arguments against the technology that have become familiar today. One commentator's point went along the lines of “electricity is more expensive than coal/gas and so heat pumps can’t be competitive”, to which Haldane responded that the commentator didn’t understand efficiency. Towards the end of the discussion Haldande revealed that the great electrical visionary Sebastian Z. de Ferranti (1864-1930) wrote to him praising his contribution, and revealing that Lord Kelvin and Ferranti had discussed heat pumps decades earlier. This must have been a moment of pride for Haldane, and one of the final things Ferranti did in his extraordinary life. Subsequent heat pump pioneers like John Summer and Cedric Beatson both singled out Haldane for the originality of his tests at Aucterarder.

Figure 4: Haldane’s comparison of the costs of coal fired and heat pump installations for public baths in 1930.

By any standard Haldane was a genius. Between the ages of 28 and 30 he had developed the first British heat pump, wrote the textbook manual on standardising the distribution system and helped design the first National Grid. A cynic might say this was due to his privilege, given the wealth and intellectual pedigree of his family. TGN Haldane was the son of Sir William Stowell Haldane, a Lawyer and Crown agent, and Edith Nelson. His uncle was Viscount Richard Burton Haldane (1856-1928), a politician who served as Lord Chancellor under Asquith’s Liberal government and MacDonald’s Labour government. His aunt was Elizabeth Haldane (1862-1937) a philosopher and biographer. Another uncle was John Scott Haldane (1860-1936) a distinguished physicist. His cousin was John Budon Sanderson Haldane (1892-1964), a famous evolutionary biologist and staunch supporter of Darwin. These family connections shaped Haldane’s intellectual and political development, as we shall see.

Sidebar; Haldane’s cousin came up with the ‘hydrogen economy’

The most mind-blowing family connection is Haldane’s cousin John Burdon Sanderson Haldane. When I said Haldane’s life is like something out of a Hollywood movie, I meant it. Whereas TGN Haldane developed Britain’s first heat pump, JBS Haldane articulated one of the earliest versions of the ‘hydrogen economy’ in a speech at the Heretics Society, Cambridge University, in 1923:

‘Personally, I think that four hundred years hence the power question in England may be solved somewhat as follows: The country will be covered with rows of metallic windmills working electric motors which in their turn supply current at a very high voltage to great electric mains. At suitable distances, there will be great power stations where during windy weather the surplus power will be used for the electrolytic decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen. These gases will be liquefied, and stored in vast vacuum jacketed reservoirs, probably sunk in the ground. If these reservoirs are sufficiently large, the loss of liquid due to leakage inwards of heat will not be great; thus the proportion evaporating daily from a reservoir 100 yards square by 60 feet deep would not be 1/1000 of that lost from a tank measuring two feet each way. In times of calm, the gases will be recombined in explosion motors working dynamos which produce electrical energy once more, or more probably in oxidation cells. Liquid hydrogen is weight for weight the most efficient known method of storing energy, as it gives about three times as much heat per pound as petrol. On the other hand it is very light, and bulk for bulk has only one third of the efficiency of petrol. This will not, however, detract from its use in aeroplanes, where weight is more important than bulk. These huge reservoirs of liquified gases will enable wind energy to be stored, so that it can be expended for industry, transportation, heating and lighting, as desired. The initial costs will be very considerable, but the running expenses less than those of our present system. Among its more obvious advantages will be the fact that energy will be as cheap in one part of the country as another, so that industry will be greatly decentralised; and that no smoke or ash will be produced’

You might consider the two Haldane’s the Cain and Abel of energy, but I couldn’t find any references to them conversing on the topic of heat pumps or hydrogen. TGN Haldane never uttered a word about hydrogen, and JBS Haldane seems to have gone cold on the idea. There is probably something in that. TGN Haldane’s heat pump has scaled to be a mature technology, with 14GW of heat pump sales globally in 2023. JBS Haldane’s vision of a hydrogen economy is no more real now than it was in 1923. JBS Haldane’s life and legacy is very controversial. He became a staunch soviet defender and ended up embroiled in defending the Stalinist Tromfin Lysenko who oversaw the purge of thousands of scientists who didn’t agree with him. 

TGN Haldane and nationalisation.

By the early 1930s there was a growing consensus that the Central Electricity Board hadn’t gone far enough. Transmission and bulk supply had been tackled, but distribution and residential supply had been left untouched. The market remained fragmented. In 1939 there were over 650 electricity undertakings (a mix of private for-profit and municipal organisations), with 400 undertakings responsible for less than 10% of sales. Civic rivalries prevented comprehensive rationalisation and technical standardisation. There was a bewildering number of voltages, which loaded considerable cost and inconvenience onto citizens. This grated on Haldane. I imagine he reflected on the experiences of his mentor Charles Merz. During the campaign to reform the London electricity system in the early 1900s Merz had been scolded by Lloyd George, then president of the Board of Trade; ‘my dear young friend, this is not a question of engineering, it is a question of politics’.

In 1934 Haldane published The Socialization of The Electrical Supply Industry under the pseudonym ‘G.H’. Perhaps he feared the professional ramifications, but the pseudonym was hardly difficult to crack. Haldane must have become political before this because the publication was for the Fabian Society and Herbert Morrison commented on a draft. The Fabian movement argued that municipal enterprise and common ownership of utilities was an essential feature of a well-organised society. In 1932 Haldane visited the USSR, but was thoroughly unimpressed. He was much more impressed by later visits to Sweden and New Zealand in 1937 and 1958 respectively, where he saw the potential of renewable hydro-electric and geo-thermal. This reveals that Haldane’s socialism was of the practical variety; he saw it as a means to developing the most efficient electricity system and as an incubator for the best technologies.

Haldane’s book is marvellous, a concise and compelling account of the history of the industry from 1880 to 1930. A digital copy can be downloaded here, and I would strongly recommend it for anyone penning another report on net zero. Haldane argued that the repeated attempts to reform the electricity system had failed because the government had been unwilling to take on vested interests. An Act of parliament in 1919 had set up toothless Electricity Commissioners that could recommend interconnection between regions but couldn’t compel them to do anything. Haldane blamed the House of Lords and a ‘violent campaign’ by the Association of Electric Power Companies for the ‘mutilation of the 1919 Bill’. For Haldane the Central Electricity Board had only gone through parliament because ‘it interfered as little as possible with vested interests’. But this had left major issues unresolved. The Weir commission had mistakenly confined its attention to generation and transmission (alas, it seems ‘scope management’ has always been with us). Haldane also argued that it was a mistake to set a uniform electricity tariff, and that the price of electricity should vary by generating station. This is potentially one of the earliest references to locational marginal pricing. The other problem was there was ‘no adequate provision to secure to the general public the benefit of economies [of scale] effected’. I.e. he thought that without public ownership private companies weren’t going to hand over the benefits of the 132kV grid to end consumers.

Haldane argued that the whole electricity industry needed to be taken into public ownership and reorganised ‘on the basis of large regional areas’. Regional boards would be given the power to standardise, drive economies of scale and extend electricity service to rural areas. Each board should have two representatives from government, one from the local authority, and two from the labour movement. Consultative committees would ensure proper engagement with unions and citizens. The existing electricity undertakings would be paid out with government bonds. The high levels of profit earned by these companies would be reinvested in driving scale and load growth; driving down prices would set off a virtuous cycle with new types of demand being electrified, in particular rail, heating and cooking. In an early articulation of ‘whole system thinking’ he suggested it would be best to nationalise the gas industry and plan it in tandem with electricity to stop ‘destructive competition’.

Over the following years Haldane worked in the background to persuade politicians and influential socialists of his vision. The fact that his uncle was Richard Haldane, Lord Chancellor in the MacDonald Labour government, must have helped. In 1936 Herbert Morrison made a speech in the House of Commons that closely followed Haldane’s argument for nationalisation. But the war effort delays any action. Haldane was one of the few from within the industry that kept pushing. In a 1941 letter to GDH Cole, the influential guild socialist and Fabian, Haldane wrote: ‘The present need for government action seems imperative. I believe the whole industry now recognizes the need for reorganisation, but the various interests seem quite incapable of agreeing amongst themselves on a voluntary basis. It would seem that reform must be initiated from outside by government action’ (Letter from TGN Haldane to GDH Cole on 6^th August 1941).

With great power comes great responsibility

In 1947 the Electricity Act received royal assent and in one fell swoop the electricity industry was consolidated under the new British Electrical Authority. From April 1948 this new organisation would inherit assets worth £831 million (or £27.2 Billion in today’s prices). It was the largest electric utility under common ownership in the western world whether measured by assets, sales, customers or employment. In the same year, 1948, Haldane became President of the Institute for Electrical Engineers following his elevation to Partner at Merz and McLellan a few years before. The nationalised electricity industry was a new industrial giant, and Haldane was a giant within it.  

In the words of Peter Parker’s uncle, with great power comes great responsibility.  And Haldane was intent on using power for good. In the next part of this blog, we will find out how.

Sources and further reading:

Leslie Hannah, Electricity before Nationalisation, (1979)

Leslie Hannah, Engineers, Managers and Politicians, The First Fifteen Years of Nationalised Electricity Supply in Britain, (1982)

Thomas Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, (1982)

Tom McGovern and Tom McLean, The genesis of the electricity supply industry in Britain: A Case Study of NESCo from 1889-1914, a short summary, 2017

Thomas Graeme Nelson Haldane (engineering hall of fame.org)

J.B.S. Haldane Presents an Early Vision of Transhumanism, and the First Proposal of a Hydrogen-Based Renewable Energy Economy. : History of Information

David Banks, ‘Dr TGN Haldane – Scottish Heat Pump Pioneer’, The International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology, Vol 85, issue 2, 2015.

JR Beard and TGN Haldane, ‘The Design of city distribution systems and the problem of standardisation’, Institute for Electrical Engineering Journal, vol 65, no 361, January 1927

TGN Haldane ‘The heat pump—an economical method of producing low-grade heat from electricity’ Institute for Electrical Engineering Journal, vol 68, no 402, June 1930.

TG, The socialisation of the electrical supply industry, 1934.