It seems kind of primitive to have power lines just hanging on poles, right?
Bit unsightly too
Is it just a cost issue and is it actually significant when considering the cost of power loss on society (work, hospital, food, etc)?
Cost, difficulty, and harder to maintaince. Want to add new coax cable? Sure toss it up. New housing being? Split it. Fiber, yep throw where the coax is. Etc. (its still high voltage, so regulations for safety obviaouly play a role here too).
Underground? Is there rock too hard to drill there? A gas line? Did we just cut an active internet line or just some junk? Tree roots? Will it containate a water table? Will it shift and break the line here? Great we have conduit, is it broken? Leakage? Big enough to handle a high gauge for an upgrade?
i say this as man in love with a good tunnel and conduit. Trust me when i say, yes we ought to do it in general, but also yes is a pain in the ass.
I know in northern Maine it’s very easy to dig and immediately get flooded. Know a guy who created a pond by just digging and letting the water fill in naturally
Go dig a trench the length of every city street in the world, and come back and tell me how easy that was.
How costly too.
Do i get fellow workers, overtime, and modern equipment?
If you want those things you need to deal with national, state and municipal governments for contracts.
Well I’ve never seen anyone deal with power lines who didn’t have those things so cheers, doesn’t sound too bad
AC lines would get large capacitance losses being buried vs. overhead. ElectroBOOM explains why in his vid about high-voltage DC lines starting at this point in the vid.
Granted this is at high voltages in the five-digit range and beyond, and I’m not sure how much that would matter at 240V split-phase that homes typically get in North America*, but that’s a technical reason why power lines are still overhead regardless; it’s more efficient and with less capacitance losses to have overhead power lines spaced far apart than to bury them.
*Yes, really, I meant what I said, North American homes still get 240V, but it’s split down the middle; 120V circuits for things like lighting and such, and normal devices that you plug into a NEMA-5 outlet such as portable space heaters, use a single hot line and a neutral line while 240V circuits for high-powered appliances like clothes dryers, ovens, HVAC systems, and things of that nature, use both hot lines, and optionally neutral in addition for things in, say, an oven or a dryer that only need 120V such as lighting, while the heating elements need 240V in those applications.
I’ll also add that maintenance of underground infrastructure is more costly than above ground.
physics. cost.
lived a lot of places, some of which (like here in PNW) have neighborhood buried cables. It’s lovely, and hella reliable. We don’t lose power in windstorms or floods or snow.
It is expensive. And not appropriate for all places - for example, places with high water tables won’t be able to do it, like Louisiana - you can’t keep the water out year round even with a billion pumps. Also hard to do in places with bedrock near the surface for expense reasons.
If you think that’s antiquated you should see all the aspects of our grid.
Don’t make the mistake of looking at one region and generalising to a universal. Where are you looking at?
Here in Switzerland practically everything <1kV is buried.
For high voltage lines they have only built one section to experiment so far. It’s pretty expensive, heats the ground a bit and blocks water with all the concrete, so it’s not so clear if it’s a good choice for agriculture happening above.I’ve wondered a lot why they don’t bury more infrastructure in hurricane regions in the US for example.
Same in many areas built in the lat 50 years in Canada too have mostly underground wires. At least in the West.
It sure is frustrating as an American to be like “why is x not done this other way that’s better and makes more sense?” And for the almost universal answer to be “we do it that way in <European country>”
Not frustrated at you, frustrated at the US
Everywhere. La fires were caused by sparking lines, previous fires as well. Ice storms knock out power anywhere, it makes sense to bury them when possible.
I’ve seen them buried in some hurricane prone areas here but not many of them. I don’t think they’d need to bury most of the high voltage lines as those are easy to maintain above ground but there are a lot of disaster prone areas that could benefit from residential power being buried locally
So yes we’d need to be smart about choosing the appropriate places for it but nearly all the places that could use it dont because $$
Because it’s much harder to bury things above ground.
I approve of this meme.
What meme are you referring to?
One reason for my region: overhead lines on wooden poles will better withstand an earthquake and will be quicker to rebuild after a major disaster. Stuff underground will get all shifted around or filled with water and mud.
Interesting how it varies with the threat. In my region wild storms are a lot more common so most new developments go underground.
They are. In developed countries.
In some countries it’s way more important that a few people can buy a third Yacht.
Harder to maintain if it is underground.
Nonsense. It’s just about being cheaper.
Saving money is a valid choice, but it may just be short term outlook here.
My brother used to work for a public electric utility and they buried their power lines where possible. The neighboring private utility guys always pointed out how much cheaper their lines were to maintain. But the public utility had solid data providing they saved money over the long term, by better protecting their lines
Yeah, this makes sense to me. Less likely for something to go wrong but more difficult to deal with when it does. The end result is a product of both of those, so depends on how much less likely and how much more difficult.
Which is what i’m saying.
Harder to maintain if it is underground.
? fewer calls for cables cut by trees / stupid people, known junction boxes in the ground placed at regular intervals to access it (not having to guess which set of poles are carrying for which residences etc), if it’s cut you’re still going to have to replace the line, that’s gonna happen whether they’re 20’ up or 3’ down… less working at height which is a great boon to safety.
I’d ask lineworkers tbh, I can see lots of advantages for underground but cost may override everything else. and physics, some places are never gonna work for it - wet lowlands, bedrock etc…
It’s roughly 5-7 times as expensive per km to bury the cables. It’s mainly a cost issue.
It makes sense in dense areas, it does not make sense everywhere. Critical infrastructure has backup power anyway because digging does not solve all reliability issues.
Here in Aroostook county Maine I can tell you I have yet to see anywhere that didn’t have everything on telephone poles. Not that I can recall anyway.
Converting existing (and i hope working) infra has its own problems too and unless its absolutelly necessary it often gets sidelined.
You cant just dig a trench and drop the lines there. You need to make sure roadsides have enough space and if at any point it would require purchasing or getting permit from land owners it will get quickly complicate. Especially if there are many different owners on the stretch.
There needs to also be plans and precautions to secure that the electricity wont be cut for too long time during the work.
Also the road sides migh need to be cleaned from any vegetation and stones that might be big enough to be problem, not to mention the road it self might need additional work if its badly kept or if they need to widen it and that all rounds back to making sure there is enough space.
Its much easier to build underground cables from the get go, than change infrastructure that was build with telephone poles in mind.
Though in development of an area you probably already dig up the ground for other utilities, so in that case it is relatively easy and cheap to also put electricity lines in there too. But retrofitting in an already developed area is really expensive. So it becomes more a question of the default.
And you can have aerial fiber 😁. That’s how france “fibred” the countryside.
Where did you get your numbers?
I found 2-3x and it’s quoating it as $5-$15 per foot vs $10-$25
- 5-7 Sweden
- 5 to 6. UK
- 4.5 UK
https://benhopkinson.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-burying-our-grid
The second one has a link to an actual study on pricing. That study indicates directed buried is twice as expensive.
It’s also has numbers on tunnel buried which is five times more expensive. Which makes sense but also means there is now a tunnel.
You don’t pay for all the space between poles. Its also cheaper ad quicker to stand a pole than to build a manhole.
It would be better for everyone if was all underground. It is purely cost with a smidgen of time efficiency.
It would save money in the long run though.
Please provide the research you are basing that claim on.
Yes, do people in power care though?
At best they do not care no. They are extracting money for donors. As such more often they oppose more efficient ways of doing things on behalf of the ones doing it now.
You would pay thousands for each meter of duct built including resurfacing whereas you would likely stand two poles with the same distance for less than a grand.
Take it that overhead is more likely to cause future issues, they would need to be significantly more for that to be the case. Where this comes in is regulations on SLAs and fines, loss of service costs. But on a pure cost basis it likely would take a long time for underground to balance out.
Companies also dont care and would prefer to lower build costs at the risk of future operational costs
It would definitely depend on circumstances on this one. In california it would pay for itself with less fires alone. But all areas would have less service costs fixing them after storms. My power just went out a few weeks back here, and last year north a ways all the power got knocked out, some for weeks, in an ice storm that left .5 to over 1 inch of ice on stuff or something.
sweden hasn’t had residential power lines on poles since like the 70’s. when i visited north america in 2008 i was shocked by the aerial rats’ nests everywhere.
Meanwhile as an American Japan shocked me with their electrical situation. Modern buildings just running wires openly along the walls and even urban areas having overhead wiring
Japan is one of the exceptions though, they get a lot of earthquakes.
That’s because of the harsh climate though? Cheaper to pay more for digged cables than constantly repair aerial lines? At least it alleviates the cost.
i mean we still have aerial lines for high voltage.
Sure, but the cheap wooden low voltage that got wrecked in storms are gone.
we don’t really get storms like that.
Duh, I grew up in Sweden and we had the occasional outage. But that was before they buried the lines.
Area of Sweden 73,860 sq mi
Area of the USA 3,531,839 sq mi
Population of Sweden: 10.6 million
Population of the USA: 340.1 million
So the population density is very similar and I therefore don’t understand what you’re getting at.
Americans loooooooooooooooove pointing out at their population density as a thought-terminating cliché although it’s very rarely relevant to any discussion.
The size of your continent does not influence the size of your metro areas, dipshits. LA isn’t the way it is because Wyoming is empty, LA is the way it is because a bunch of dumbasses decided that local mass transit and terraced housing should be outlawed and bulldozed in order to fuck over African-Americans communities.
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okay? we don’t bury high-voltage lines, if that’s what you’re implying.
It’s easy when nearly all of your population lives in a third of your landmass mostly in the south. We’re still talking about residential. Most of our cities and towns are also not walkable if that gives you an estimate of how spread out we are even in urban areas here.
Besides it took laws for power companies to get the last rural communities and families. I remember my grandparents talking about it. Honestly the better investment would be putting up solar panels cut off from the grid with battery banks to cover the most rural over here.
all the power generation is in the north
I thought we were talking about residential lines, not transmission lines.
then why does geographical location matter?
Population density matters:
I mean there’s a cost per mile to lay cable underground, and that cost per customer goes down when the population density is higher, which it is in all of Europe compared to the US.
the us has higher population density than sweden.
In certain areas. But most of the us has a rather low density. You don’t see above ground lines in most US cities.
I really don’t understand that argument. So is most of the US not connected to the sewers? Since these are also dug underground. If you already dig trenches for the sewer system, then you can also place electricity lines for relatively cheap. Though that was not done in the US and retrofitting is a big cost, usually only done, when you need to dig either way (e.g. for modernizing the sewer system). So its more about the default and if a country can take the opportunity when sewers get modernized
Yeah, there’s quite a bit of residential on septic tanks here. Incorporated towns is usually the line where public sewer exists. Before you ask, not every home here is on municipal water either nor natural gas. I remember a family growing up that got water deliveries for their cistern if their well ever ran dry. My childhood home had a giant propane tank for our gas appliances and a septic tank system because we lived on the other side of an interstate highway even though we lived “within the city limits”. I remember dad always saying it was difficult for the utilities to bore under the interstate to get the handful of homes (maybe 50 of us?) in the city limits on the other side. More homes in the USA have access to power than municipal water, moreso than natural gas, and much moreso than public sewer. Like I said elsewhere, we are really spread out. This guy really puts it into perspective
You have no idea how infrastructure is built.
just like sweden.
https://wprices.com/energy-prices/household-electricity-prices-in-europe/
Sweden has residential electricity prices at $0.2768/kWh.
https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/
The US averages $0.1798/kWh.
The price of electricity in a country usually has nothing to do with whether power lines are run above or below the ground. Very often a large part of your electricity price is determined by taxes and subsidies for example. And in my country (the Netherlands) the suppliers of electricity are different companies than the ones responsible for the power network too. Like Sweden we haven’t had residential power lines running above ground for half a century or so, it’s pretty uncommon in (Western?) Europe.
Infrastructure is a huge part of electricity prices.
I think in most of Europe, the cost of the actual electricity and the delivery of the electricity (i.e the infrastructure cost) is split into two different costs. Not sure if the price cited above includes both.
If that is the case than your costs are incredibly higher.
Ditto Germany. We just have the big pylons running from the hydroelectric wossname in the Rhine.
idk where that place pulls from but i pay $.08/kWh. when i lived further north it was $0.02.
there was a period where the prices went to what you quoted but that was in connection to the nord stream sabotage where germany’s prices skyrocketed and ours were dragged up along with them.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics
Here’s the European Commission.
okay? i’m just checking my power bills.
That may be true. I’m just telling you that if so, it doesn’t reflect Sweden as a whole.
sweden is split into four “electricity zones”, from north to south. the prices seem to match those in zone 4, in the very very south.
Edit:
here is the current price for each zone in öre/kWh (an öre is 1/100th of a krona). divide by 10 and you get cents, ish.
for reference the current spot price when converted is $0.12/kWh. more than i pay but i have a fixed kWh price.
Well yeah, it’s quite easy to keep your energy prices low when you
- have a wealth of hydrocarbon sources in-country
- supplement them by bombing other nations until they give you there’s
- don’t give a flying fuch about the planet
And yet, the US pays normal market rates for crude like everyone else.
Sweden has residential electricity prices at $0.2768/kWh.
The US averages $0.1798/kWh.
I accept the cost-benefits analysis and wish to proceed on this quote.
That could be it.
Digging isn’t free in Sweden either, right? Maybe OP thinks they’re ugly, but sometimes good enough is good enough.
That has nothing to do with the power lines
Almost anything infrastructure related, however it exists is probably the most efficient cost/maintenance ratio for that area. That is basically the only requirement for the engineers in charge of designing that kind of shit.
Unless you’re the Texas power grid. Then it’s literally the cheapest possible way to still be able to bill people for it.
If you value stuff like safety and the environment, there’s also regulations.
If we can see that the huge influence corporations have is messing up the Texas power grid, and why don’t we assume that they are also influencing other infrastructures?
My city sits on a filled in swamp.
My entire state if we’re honest.
Louisiana?
I would assume. That’s where I am.
I grew up far from it, in a vastly different terrain and climate, and I’ve lived here most of my life. But I remember having a cartoon book as a kid that depicted a house in a swamp (I think it may have been one of the books about The Woozles),l.
This memory resurfaced in 2024 when I had to drive from Houston TX to Galliano LA. It was swampy to say the least, and one particular view from somewhere along I10 (or maybe it was route 90, I don’t remember where) looked exactly like in that book. Many of my fellow countrymen have accidentally hit a moose while driving. I’m the only one I know who has run over an alligator.
How do you survive hitting a moose? I feel like that’s equivalent to hitting a brick wall.
It’s pretty dangerous, yes. But since mooses are so tall, you usually hit the legs, and the beast comes in through the windshield. Duck, and it’ll pass over you. However, they might then start to flail and kick you from the backseat out of panic.
And?
