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)?
Money.
I work in different utility but the principal is the same. It costs roughly 10x as much to bury cables in the ground than it does to put them in the air on poles.
It tends to make sense in dense urban environments or where there’s other factors but for almost all rural and suburban settings the costs to dig in underground cables, ducting, access structures and the associated safety concerns, plus the increased costs to access and repair, far outweigh the possible costs of running cables overhead, even though they’re more susceptible to damage.
edit:sp
I would bet that the initial cost is much higher while the lifetime of the installation isn’t nearly as far apart. Tree trimming isn’t needed, poles don’t need replaced as they age, less damage from storms, and I would assume the lines themselves don’t age as fast when protected from the elements.
Plus ongoing maintenance increases in cost each year. It really seems like the short term savings are overblown.
When a storm comes through and there are widespread disruptions, it is common to send cars along routes to assess the condition of each pole and its equipment. Damaged equipment or lines is easily visible. In a fairly short amount of time the damage can all be assessed and waiting line crews can get to work quickly fixing equipment.
With underground infrastructure, it takes longer to pinpoint exactly what’s and fix it.
Except underground they wouldn’t be damaged by a storm in the first place.
The break even point for us is estimated at about 30 years, so you have a point, but if you can point out any business that looks at returns over that time frame, they don’t operate in utilities.
And on your other point, not being exposed to wind and rain doesn’t mean underground cables aren’t susceptible to damage, rats love chewing cables, builders love ignoring prints etc and the time and costs involved in putting things back in the ground are, like I said, dramatically higher.
Squirrels chew on lines above ground too!
I never said that burying them was a perfect solution.
If you think that’s antiquated you should see all the aspects of our grid.
They are. In developed countries.
In some countries it’s way more important that a few people can buy a third Yacht.
Money.
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.
When my mom got fiber internet, they had to dig a trench through everyone’s front yard in the neighborhood. They managed to destroy one of her Christmas yard decorations.
When I got fiber internet, a dude in a truck ran it from a pole across the street in like two hours.
People seriously underestimate how disruptive underground work is. Imagine instead of a neighborhood with lawns a dense urban area full of concrete, asphalt, and plumbing and how long it would take to retrofit overhead power infrastructure to underground. People would be furious.
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.
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.
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.
It costs less to maintain poles in high density areas than it would to burry them and have to close off entire neighborhoods.
Maintenance, modification, assessment, and initial installation are all more difficult. And yes that means more expensive, and yes the cost difference is significant. It is more resource and personnel intense to work underground lines than overhead.
When it comes to damage from weather, while underground lines can be slightly more resilient they are much, much more of a pain to assess and and fix. A good line crew can put up a new pole in about an hour. It takes a lot longer to run underground digging equipment.
In some places underground lines are run, of course, because for various reasons the associated downsides are deemed worth it. However when you’re looking at a whole infrastructure, you want easy to service, fast to install, and cost efficient.
I guess unless you plan the community to have underground lines to begin with it’s just a no go?
It can be done, but the people paying for it need a compelling reason. Just saying “It’s kind of primitive ya know.” isn’t enough.
Well there are many compelling reasons but they all seem to be countered with “but that’s expensive”
So I think it’s fair to say it’s primitive because the reason for use is it’s the cheapest solution to the problem of power delivery
but they all seem to be countered with “but that’s expensive”
And time consuming and more difficult to assess, maintain, modify, and install. While increasing the underground footprint which makes it more difficult for other underground utilities and construction.
Well there are many compelling reasons
And when the reasons are good enough the lines go underground. Otherwise yes the cheap and easy way is better as the baseline, because paying ~10x more and taking much longer to install a system that is harder to work with for no good reason is stupid.
I mostly agree with you.
Underground footprint is kind of flimsy reason tough, because if the grid and the infra around it is well designed, in the plans should allready be a plan how to expand if other utilities are needed later.
Also enviroment where the lines are going to be build is important. Close to surface bedrock or soil with lots of big rocks. Overhead of course. Going trough or next to forest in area where winds may fell trees or snow packed on the branches may bend trees. Underground is the smart choise.
Also while underground is slower and more expensive to fix, its rare that multiple lines break at the same time. Most areas has backups upon backups, so even if one line gets damaged it does not mean large amount of households are going to be without power. Overhangs on the other hand are more on the mercy of nature and big storms are more likely to break same line from multiple points or break multiple lines.
Also broken overheads are more dangerous when broken and fixing them is more precarious.
Both have good and bad things.
in the plans should already be a plan
“Should” is the worst word in the English language.
Underground lines, when damaged can also be dangerous. I’ve known of multiple dogs in may area who’ve died instantly just stepping on top utility access points that become electrified due to damaged underground lines. For overhead lines, if it’s not down, it’s generally not a safety hazard to the general public and if it is down, vast majority know to steer well clear of them and report the damage.
Wow. Needed to google those dog strories. Atleast the ones i found were because live wire was connecting to sewergrate due the degration or damage to the lines. It was hard to find any proper knowledge why that happened, but what i know about ground lines and safety regulations those things should be impossible to happen if the lines were build following regulations (at least by my countrys standards, cable must be dug deep enough, that frost does not effect to ground and it needs to be insulated. There needs to be also atleast 20cm or 7.8 inches of fine sand, or fine rockles dirt around it as a safety layer. So live wire should never be able to contact cement or any metal parts even if the cable is broken and soil is wet)
There was also incredible sad story about 15 dogs dying after overhead line dropped in to a kennel.
Im sorry i was little unclear. The safety part was mostly about doing repairs. Where i live number one reason for the lines to get damaged are fallen trees, be it by wind or packed snow. Cleaning windfall trees is difficult by it self as the trees are often tangled and if the tree is in tension when somebody cuts it wrong it, the tree might swing with an force enough to break a neck. Add to that mess tangled wires, constant hurry to fix it and the likelyhood that the wire that needs repairing is on the middle of nothing.
it’s about cost. They’re more expensive to bury and to maintain.
And it’s not that helpful in storms either because even if the lines near your house are burred, they’re still connected to the above ground stuff that runs along roads, rural areas, and the big transmission lines themselves.
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.
Go dig a trench the length of every city street in the world, and come back and tell me how easy that was.
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
How costly too.
Because it’s much harder to bury things above ground.
I approve of this meme.
What meme are you referring to?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And you can have aerial fiber 😁. That’s how france “fibred” the countryside.
