this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
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Yes
But
not getting power
Put it in the ground
And have to dig up even more earth using even more big machines? If you did a 50ft power line underground, that's 50 ft of earth that has to be dug up, not to mention what happens whenever something inevitably goes wrong and you have to dig it all up again. Then you also have to bury transformers, which means you need to cool them.
There's many, many good reasons that we use power lines over burying them. Mostly, power lines are so significantly cheaper and easier that it's not even comparable. I've seen the bill when a buried fiber line gets broken. It is crazy expensive.
i don't know of a single town here that has overhead power lines in populated areas. those are for long-distance transmission only.
or, okay, i know of one. but that's because there's a steel mill and a hydropower plant there, and you don't wan to bury lines that carry that around of energy.
Obviously you hire groundhogs and keep their sensory whiskers to the grindstone with the threat of mole scabs
PG&E has been having to cut off power for swaths of customers in California every time we get in a red-flag fire weather situation, because their power lines over the mountains sway and spark and have caused horrendous wildfires. Notably the Camp Fire that completely destroyed the town of Paradise, killing over 85 people and thousands of animals. It's been pretty expensive for them. Of course, they saved money for decades by skimping on maintenance, but that all went in their executives' pockets, so they're having trouble with trying to get up to code and pay their court costs and fines
I'M AN ADULT!
So many things
To put in the ground
Like this and this and this and even this
Different countries have different needs. In the US you have hurricanes so it makes sense to.protect the power lines above ground, but here we just had a flood, do you want us to loose power for months everytime it rains a lot? It makes a lot nore sense to us to have it above ground.