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Chris wrote:
That's scary!
Never did understand why the US power lines run on poles - apart from the high voltage distribution lines across country most of ours run underground.
Chris, I don't either. It's not like everyone don't pay enough, a standard household electric bill is over $100 USD. I look at the poles and wonder why we have extreme advancements in just about every other walk of humanity, but the power comes across the same poles as it did in 1950. Some of them are actually the same poles.
Somebody is making an incredible amount of money and we are not moving forward in this area.
It comes down to cost. It costs on the order of 10 to 15x to put them underground. In new developments they are underground, and buyers in those areas foot the bill for the added cost. But to go back and convert is very expensive and time consuming to go through developed areas. And it pisses people off. There is nobody getting rich off of not putting all the power underground. My Dad finished out his career working for Xcel in Denver as the Electric Distribution manager for the area. Basically he ran the trouble truck division in Metro Denver. They were not rolling in cash for sure. It is a huge and expensive infrastructure to generate and deliver power to a municipality, let alone an entire state or the whole US.