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Buried cables tend to have a higher lifetime cost, which is one reason why Seattle has stuck with aerial cables in so many neighborhoods. West Seattle neighbor

Buried cables tend to have a higher lifetime cost, which is one reason why Seattle has stuck with aerial cables in so many neighborhoods. West Seattle neighborhoods have more buried cables than most, and they're facing some very expensive reliability issues due to IIRC dielectric breakdown. If Seattle wanted to squeeze better reliability out of their aerial transmission systems, they could move to a four-year tree clearance pruning cycle, like Portland. Last I heard, we're still on a five year cycle and every time changing it comes up, it's seen as cost prohibitive. We get the reliability we're willing to pay for.

fy20 6y ago
Is there any reason why Europe can do buried cables just fine (and has been for a good few decades), but the US can't? As I understand even new neighbourhoods in the US often have overhead cables.
- sildur 6y ago
  I live in Europe, and in general we don't distrust the state, and we don't want to pay less taxes (we would like more efficiency managing them, though).
  - rocgf 6y ago
    Interesting, somehow I never thought of that. Lowering taxes is just not a major talking point in European politics except maybe for certain types of taxes, or distributing them differently, but there are no big divides on this.
- brandmeyer 6y ago
  The situation is highly regional. Walter's experience is specific to Seattle, but he's right that each region has its own infrastructure problems. Denver metro area (my neck of the woods) has mostly buried power, but a long-term fresh water problem.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
petertodd 6y ago
Buried infrastructure also tends to be down for longer. Above ground lines go down more often. But they're easier to fix when they do; fixing buried lines can be a nightmare. As an example, a mall near me was without power for weeks after flooding destroyed some underground electric infrastructure. The flooding didn't even do any real harm to the mall! They just got unlucky: underground lines and other equipment that should be waterproof weren't, and they shorted out in such a way that a bunch of stuff had to be dug up and replaced.
- modo_mario 6y ago
  Also anecdotal here but I can't remember the last time power was down for a long time where I live in Belgium. If I hear about issues it's generally extremely local or an issue with power generation (we're predicted to have more issues in the future due to our gov being idiots void of long term thinking when it came to replacing old nuclear plants) So all in all I haven't experienced this being down longer issue (and yes flooding shouldn't be able to destroy underground lines and such.)
- Xylakant 6y ago
  In 2019, some contractor got lucky while doing drilling works and scored a hit on both the main cable and the backup cable connecting the neighborhood of Berlin-Köpenick to the grid - severing each of the three phases in both cables. Establishing the construction site, digging the hole and fixing the two 110KV cables took a mere 31 hours - and that includes 6 hours of setting time for the couplings used. This was pretty much the worst case scenario that could have happened. It's possible to maintain good uptime with buried infrastructure, as with most things it's a matter of spending the money to do so.

fy20 6y ago

Is there any reason why Europe can do buried cables just fine (and has been for a good few decades), but the US can't? As I understand even new neighbourhoods in the US often have overhead cables.

sildur 6y ago
I live in Europe, and in general we don't distrust the state, and we don't want to pay less taxes (we would like more efficiency managing them, though).
- rocgf 6y ago
  Interesting, somehow I never thought of that. Lowering taxes is just not a major talking point in European politics except maybe for certain types of taxes, or distributing them differently, but there are no big divides on this.
brandmeyer 6y ago
The situation is highly regional. Walter's experience is specific to Seattle, but he's right that each region has its own infrastructure problems. Denver metro area (my neck of the woods) has mostly buried power, but a long-term fresh water problem.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

petertodd 6y ago

Buried infrastructure also tends to be down for longer. Above ground lines go down more often. But they're easier to fix when they do; fixing buried lines can be a nightmare. As an example, a mall near me was without power for weeks after flooding destroyed some underground electric infrastructure. The flooding didn't even do any real harm to the mall! They just got unlucky: underground lines and other equipment that should be waterproof weren't, and they shorted out in such a way that a bunch of stuff had to be dug up and replaced.

modo_mario 6y ago
Also anecdotal here but I can't remember the last time power was down for a long time where I live in Belgium. If I hear about issues it's generally extremely local or an issue with power generation (we're predicted to have more issues in the future due to our gov being idiots void of long term thinking when it came to replacing old nuclear plants) So all in all I haven't experienced this being down longer issue (and yes flooding shouldn't be able to destroy underground lines and such.)
Xylakant 6y ago
In 2019, some contractor got lucky while doing drilling works and scored a hit on both the main cable and the backup cable connecting the neighborhood of Berlin-Köpenick to the grid - severing each of the three phases in both cables. Establishing the construction site, digging the hole and fixing the two 110KV cables took a mere 31 hours - and that includes 6 hours of setting time for the couplings used. This was pretty much the worst case scenario that could have happened. It's possible to maintain good uptime with buried infrastructure, as with most things it's a matter of spending the money to do so.