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)?
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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.
That’s because of the harsh climate though? Cheaper to pay more for digged cables than constantly repair aerial lines? At least it alleviates the cost.
i mean we still have aerial lines for high voltage.
Sure, but the cheap wooden low voltage that got wrecked in storms are gone.
we don’t really get storms like that.
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
Japan is one of the exceptions though, they get a lot of earthquakes.
Area of Sweden 73,860 sq mi
Area of the USA 3,531,839 sq mi
okay? we don’t bury high-voltage lines, if that’s what you’re implying.
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.
all the power generation is in the north
I thought we were talking about residential lines, not transmission lines.
then why does geographical location matter?
Population density matters:
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.
just like sweden.
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
You have no idea how infrastructure is built.
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
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.
Americans loooooooooooooooove pointing out at their population density as a thought-terminating cliché although it’s very rarely relevant to any discussion.
The size of your continent does not influence the size of your metro areas, dipshits. LA isn’t the way it is because Wyoming is empty, LA is the way it is because a bunch of dumbasses decided that local mass transit and terraced housing should be outlawed and bulldozed in order to fuck over African-Americans communities.
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.
Ditto Germany. We just have the big pylons running from the hydroelectric wossname in the Rhine.
Infrastructure is a huge part of electricity prices.
I think in most of Europe, the cost of the actual electricity and the delivery of the electricity (i.e the infrastructure cost) is split into two different costs. Not sure if the price cited above includes both.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
its likely becauses it protected from damage by the ground/concrete, and wear and tear from weather.
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 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. It also means a long installation time which mean 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Money.
I work in different utility but the principal is the same. It coast 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.
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.
They generally are, in rich countries. In poorer countries with less developed infrastructure you can still commonly find them.
shrugs in American
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.
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 can do it, but it costs more. I understand that some of the reason that California’s electricity rates are as high as they are is because PG&E is doing a bunch of burying lines.
EDIT:
https://schlanj.substack.com/p/why-electricity-prices-in-california
The IOUs spent $7.7 billion in 2024 on wildfire mitigation, which equates to 4.2 ¢/kWh. Due to years of fire suppression, exacerbated by warming trends, and the desire to build homes in wooded areas, wildfires caused by downed distribution lines are a never-ending problem. To resolve the situation, the utilities are burying the power lines, but the cost is enormous.
Wildfire mitigation accounts for just over half of the price premium.
Cost. Including maintenance costs.
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.
Money.
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 kost 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), and the memory resurfaced 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 moose 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 costs less to maintain poles in high density areas than it would to burry them and have to close off entire neighborhoods.
