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)?
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.
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.
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.
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
Harder to maintain if it is underground.
Nonsense. It’s just about being cheaper.
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…
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.
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.
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.
