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)?
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 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?
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.
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?
Would you rather spend $100 for a 5% chance of losing power for 4-8 hours per year, or spend $10,000 dollars for a .1% chance of losing power for a minimum of 2 days?
Is that the real cost differential? Someone else said it’s only 5-7x more expensive which doesn’t sound that bad
Not to discount the significance of such expenses but 5-7x is way different than 100x the expense
also the value of lost power can be significant, if someone dies you lose all their economic output for life and some people can work from home so even a few hundred people losing power could add up and have been worth paying for underground cables
Have you, personally, ever had to maintain something that is buried?
Because I used to think buried wires were the way to go, too. I am older and wiser now.
There are ways to do it that are not so terrible but the preplanning is immense and it would be difficult to implement in many places that are filled with lots of underground utilities already
I’ve also seen a few people around me bury the line from the pole to their house so it probably has to be done piecemeal like that if at all
Looks like you have your answers! Many places have lots of underground utilities already (at least enough that they would have to keep switching between buried and raised, or just stick with raised), and they would have to change then over piecemeal.
It makes much more sense to stick to burying utilities with new construction where able, rather than replacing all the lines currently raised on poles.
Every major infrastructure project that involves tunneling or digging runs into massive cost overruns, so basing the number on a cost estimate is already fishy. 100x is probably overkill, but not absurdly so. US infrastructure averages 8-12x more than elsewhere in the world, and it’s getting worse. New York adding less than two miles of track to their subway still cost more than double the estimate. California is spending infinite money on a rail line that may never exist.
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.
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.
Where I live, all the power, except major cross-country transmission, is underground.
You do find more minor transmission lines out where it gets rural, right down to telegraph-style wooden poles, but you’ll pretty much never see it in cities or suburbs. (Wooden telephone poles are a different matter).
The only advantage of power-by-pole is ease of repair. Once it’s underground, it has to share trunking with the other utilities in the area, and I’m pretty sure the number of times a road needs to be dug up varies as the square of the number of utilities under it.
But at least it’s relatively safe under there when the road isn’t being dug up for the fourth time in a year.
There are several environmental factors that generally contribute to underground viability.
Ground water- obviously flooding, but evem heavy rain areas, or just high humid soil levels can create problems (cables produce heat, while soil’s usually cool so condensation can be a problem wherever theres a splice/ junction)
And speaking of cables producing heat, this can become its own problem. Dirt acts as an insulator for heat. Since the transfer of large amounts of electricity produces heat, unless your ground is cold enough to actively cool them, this means derating the cables (using much larger ones to transfer the same power) which greatly raises the cost.
This is why even in cooler climates, hi voltage / long range transfer is done above ground.
Earthquakes and ground frost difference issues can also cause cables to get sheared.
Ofc, above ground power has plenty of its own issues- trees falling forest fire areas, just general exposure to the elements.
But generally, ease and expense to fix issues, and relative lack of disruption to infrastructure while doing so, win out, Making above ground preferable if there are any potential issues with underground.
Theres also a bit of a political aspect that should be mentioned- who owns the lines- burial is always more costly, so if energy co’s own the lines like in america, theyre rarely going to want to spend the extra money burrying and unburrying to fix/ add, unless its really more cost effective. (Or the municipality is footing the bill/ has already done the infrastructure, like a lot of denser urban areas in the US, like NYC and DC. )
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
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.
Ditto Germany. We just have the big pylons running from the hydroelectric wossname in the Rhine.
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.
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.
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
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.
okay? we don’t bury high-voltage lines, if that’s what you’re implying.
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.
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.
It costs less to maintain poles in high density areas than it would to burry them and have to close off entire neighborhoods.
There’s a pragmatic reason too. Power lines and transformers need constant maintenance. When the line fails somewhere, it’s easier to access when you don’t have to dig, and also less disruptive.
Also, they’re up high because people in general are dumb af and will fuck with them if they’re within reach.
Power lines need way less maintenance if you bury them.
Orders of magnitude less maintenance.
The cost to reach them to diagnose and replace outweighs the decreased maintenance. Digging is really expensive.
I was in a suburb once that had the lines running in an accessible plastic rectangle running between the sidewalk and road and it seemed pretty brilliant
Which is a solution for a limited area where the extra cost and longer install time might be deemed worthwhile, but when you want to run miles upon miles of lines then it is less feasible.
I think it’s probably reasonable to run the large transmission lines open because they’re huge and easier to landscape but most people live in dense suburbs or cities (where they’re already underground)
And most dense suburbs just have their power polls waiting precariously under trees which requires additional tree maintenance and is expensive to fix after a storm
I agree there are places it wouldn’t make sense but it seems like nearly all the places where it would make sense still havnt bothered (cost, I know)
Companies have done the math, repeatedly.
If underground cost less even over a 5 year period, they would be doing it.
In a dense urban environment you are wanting retrofitted lines run through terrain already full of concrete, water lines, and other urban features. That would take a lot of coordination in design and still likely miss things (which means more time and money on redesigns). It also means a long installation time which means extended disruption to the area.
These sorts of underground lines are easier to run in totally fresh new construction, but then again, it runs into servicing issues and extra expense.
is expensive to fix after a storm
Assessing and fixing underground lines is much harder, more expensive, and disruptive.
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.
They generally are, in rich countries. In poorer countries with less developed infrastructure you can still commonly find them.
shrugs in American
Money.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My neighborhood, built from bare dirt about 30 years ago, does, as do the other neighborhoods and commercial sites built here since then.
The answer is always money, though. It’s cheaper to put wires up on poles, so that’s how it was done. It’s expensive to move them underground, so the wires stay up on poles.
