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)?
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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You would pay thousands for each meter of duct built including resurfacing whereas you would likely stand two poles with the same distance for less than a grand.
Take it that overhead is more likely to cause future issues, they would need to be significantly more for that to be the case. Where this comes in is regulations on SLAs and fines, loss of service costs. But on a pure cost basis it likely would take a long time for underground to balance out.
Companies also dont care and would prefer to lower build costs at the risk of future operational costs
It would definitely depend on circumstances on this one. In california it would pay for itself with less fires alone. But all areas would have less service costs fixing them after storms. My power just went out a few weeks back here, and last year north a ways all the power got knocked out, some for weeks, in an ice storm that left .5 to over 1 inch of ice on stuff or something.