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)?
Harder to maintain if it is underground.
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.
In Germany: They are in the more urban areas.
The more rural have it either on street poles, poles on the roof, both or underground.Cost and ease of maintenance. Isn’t it obvious? The only ugly thing is instead of having separated multuple conductors without isolation on the wire, you can have isolated wires, and twisted together, so instead of 50 wires throughout the air, you would have one thicker.
Let me reverse the question
Why do power cables need to be buried in non dense urban area?
Yes it will make it a bit ugly, but so what?. It’s not like it being ugly will do anything anyway. It’s not like being a bit ugly is a very annoying thing unlike when there a trash heap and it smells bad.
I think we should just keep it up there for sub-urban and rural areas, and invest the saved money on other things.
Also, im from developing country so my perspective is bit different for this topic.
It makes life harder on Spider-Man if you bury things.
I work for a Telco and most of our service interruptions are caused by fibre cuts, falling trees on poles, and ice or fire damage to aerial cables. Underground is just so much better.
They are safer and less prone to fault underground.
It just costs more.
Because it’s much harder to bury things above ground.
One thing to be aware of is that it’s much easier and cheaper to repair damages or upgrade it. Underground is not without problems too, moisture or ground movement for example.
There is moisture above ground too and ground movement can affect the poles as well. I would think that there is more exposure to damages above ground with cars hitting them, tree limbs, strong winds, animals chewing through wires, etc. While it’s easier to repair damages above ground I believe there would be less of them with buried lines.
They are. In developed countries.
Probably harder to maintain easier fixes in colder areas where the ground freezes for half a year.
Shielded and reinforced underground conduits my friend!
Not true. I. Most cases they are better protected against the elements if underground.
But it costs money to do and requires higher tax rates to be spent on it instead of military and paying off corrupted politicians
Tax cuts and tax discounts to the rich and filthy rich
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
Bit unsightly too
i actually love them, aesthetically.
i think they’re cheaper to replace/repair in earthquake prone regions
ALSO if you’re in a snowy remote region, serial killers LOVE to snip these so they can “pick people off” one-by-one. This might seem detrimental to the local economy, by virtue of depleting the workforce, but serial killers are great for local tourism once they’re put away.
They have that Serial Experiments Lain aesthetic I cannot explain.
