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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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this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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Would you rather spend $100 for a 5% chance of losing power for 4-8 hours per year, or spend $10,000 dollars for a .1% chance of losing power for a minimum of 2 days?
Is that the real cost differential? Someone else said it’s only 5-7x more expensive which doesn’t sound that bad
Not to discount the significance of such expenses but 5-7x is way different than 100x the expense
also the value of lost power can be significant, if someone dies you lose all their economic output for life and some people can work from home so even a few hundred people losing power could add up and have been worth paying for underground cables
Have you, personally, ever had to maintain something that is buried?
Because I used to think buried wires were the way to go, too. I am older and wiser now.
There are ways to do it that are not so terrible but the preplanning is immense and it would be difficult to implement in many places that are filled with lots of underground utilities already
I’ve also seen a few people around me bury the line from the pole to their house so it probably has to be done piecemeal like that if at all
This reads a lot like someone who hasnt had to dig a half mile long, 4 foot deep hole, where for the most part you cant use any heavy equipment.
The cost of just that labor alone would be immense, then you have to do all that again bare minimum for any issue. And thats even assuming the ground is ammenable for it, which is not the case for a lot of places. Sure you have to deal with icing or the occasional damaged pole, but youd also have issues with it underground. Sooo many people do not call in to check for utility line locations.
Yes the hook up from the city to the house can be buried pretty easily, but that wire is very different from the wire used on the poles at least where I live.
I do not miss construction.
... And yet almost all developed nations do it without any issues. ... And funny enough technologies like micro trenching work for most use cades.
Oh boy....
Most? Not true.
So, prove me wrong.
You made the claim you provide the proof
Looks like you have your answers! Many places have lots of underground utilities already (at least enough that they would have to keep switching between buried and raised, or just stick with raised), and they would have to change then over piecemeal.
It makes much more sense to stick to burying utilities with new construction where able, rather than replacing all the lines currently raised on poles.
Heat dissipates easier in open air than in conduit, meaning the conductors can be undersized drastically compared to if they're in conduit. Ever notice how the wires from the weatherhead are 2/0 awg, and on the poles and to your house (even after the transformer so same operating voltage), are way smaller? More like 12 awg on poles? The cost for the larger wire buried underground would be massive.
Also, as others have said, maintenance is significantly easier.
Yet almost all of the developed world does it....
And most of the world runs on 240 or 220v, which is a higher voltage and allows for smaller conductors.
Idk, another factor is the US started their electric grid in the 1800s to the 1940s. It was the first in the world. Hard to stop once something is set as a standard like that. It's like asking why they used lead and asbestos or built foundations out of stacks of sandstone rocks, all of which applies to my house haha. I'm sure in a few decades people will look back and question our use of plastics.
The difference between the US the rest of the world is 4 years and due to the Edison-Westinghouse struggle the US were overtaken by the end of the century. (Same goes for Telephones btw. NY had less then half the phone lines Berlin had by 1900)
The argument with the time difference is often cited but not based on fact - it's more about the fact that electricity networks in the US were a commercial/capitalist enterprise from the start which was not the case for European cities for a long time.
And even today power grids in the US are,well, seen as something to be run with the maximum amount of profits with the minimum amount of goverment regulation. If you consider the difference to Europe or parts of Asis it's insane.
Fair enough
Every major infrastructure project that involves tunneling or digging runs into massive cost overruns, so basing the number on a cost estimate is already fishy. 100x is probably overkill, but not absurdly so. US infrastructure averages 8-12x more than elsewhere in the world, and it's getting worse. New York adding less than two miles of track to their subway still cost more than double the estimate. California is spending infinite money on a rail line that may never exist.