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My family members on a rural volunteer fire brigade have put out a few fires caused by a brushtail possum being electrocuted on a pole mounted transformer and t

My family members on a rural volunteer fire brigade have put out a few fires caused by a brushtail possum being electrocuted on a pole mounted transformer and then fleeing to nearby trees in panic while on fire.

bombcar 4y ago
I know that there are problems with burying high-tension lines (they give off heat, basically) but around here most of the normal "household power lines" are buried and it greatly reduces snow load problems, downed branches, and critters eating them.
- homero 4y ago
  But those can't be inspected or repaired easily and they corrode in water
- vel0city 4y ago
  There are other issues other than just the heat of power lines. The earth itself has effects of the electromagnetic waves on the wire, burying the lines changes the capacitance of the system. This means there are a lot of other design considerations to the whole system that need to be accounted for and handled other than just burying the cables in the ground. You're then also massively increasing the cost of the cable. The overhead lines use the ground as the ground while buried cables need sheathing. You're also then increasing cost from all the insulators and protecting of the cable to bury it compared to just having the wire exposed. Things aren't too challenging when you're only talking a few kV, but once you're dealing with 35kV+ transmission lines things start getting complicated and messy.
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  I hear this pretty much every time that it's brought up around Europeans, and I was thinking about what it would take for us to change this. I think the biggest issue is that you'd have to somehow get the private property rights sorted out in order to dig up thousands and thousands of people's front yards, and that's probably the biggest factor in why we keep on letting this happen to ourselves. It's kinda like the biggest challenge is NIMBYism (Not in my backyard-ism) but front yard instead. The other comments talk about technical challenges but at least you guys aren't massively on fire every year. You would think that would be compelling or something right?
  - MandieD 4y ago
    I currently live in a suburb of a large German city, in a neighborhood packed with row houses and low-rise apartments. My father lives in west Texas in a neighborhood with maybe 50 households, each on their own 1-10 acres, 30 miles from the nearest town. What is the per-household cost to my utility to maintain the buried lines for my neighborhood, versus what would the per-household cost be to my father’s utility to bury the lines to his little neighborhood?
    - Glawen 4y ago
      Lines are buried in big cities, in smaller towns the lines are running from house to house, using roofs instead of poles
    - c_o_n_v_e_x 4y ago
      Since you mentioned Texas... In certain parts of inner Houston, there is still pole mounted power. When hurricanes inevitably roll into town, the parts of town with pole utilities lose power for far longer (days-weeks) than other parts of town with buried utilities (hours-days).
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The homeowner stuff is actually easier than it might seem - almost universally the main problem is cost. People with power lines across their property already have an easement and the connection to the pope/box is easy enough to run underground with a pig and little disturbance. Our town has it because the town has its own town-owned power company and they don’t care for multiple callouts during winter. Other older, richer areas nearby don’t have it. Homeowners are generally in favor of it - as it makes the area look nicer and if you do have an easement it’ll drop from like 40 ft to ten or so.
mwint 4y ago
How’d they figure this out? Eyewitnesses?
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  On occasion, also a dead possum at the source of ignition. One memorable example, the possum jumped from the power pole into a nearby hedge, so the fire started at the top. Pretty much all wooden power poles in NZ have metal bands on them to try to prevent possums climbing them, but it's not 100% effective.

bombcar 4y ago

I know that there are problems with burying high-tension lines (they give off heat, basically) but around here most of the normal "household power lines" are buried and it greatly reduces snow load problems, downed branches, and critters eating them.

homero 4y ago
But those can't be inspected or repaired easily and they corrode in water
vel0city 4y ago
There are other issues other than just the heat of power lines. The earth itself has effects of the electromagnetic waves on the wire, burying the lines changes the capacitance of the system. This means there are a lot of other design considerations to the whole system that need to be accounted for and handled other than just burying the cables in the ground. You're then also massively increasing the cost of the cable. The overhead lines use the ground as the ground while buried cables need sheathing. You're also then increasing cost from all the insulators and protecting of the cable to bury it compared to just having the wire exposed. Things aren't too challenging when you're only talking a few kV, but once you're dealing with 35kV+ transmission lines things start getting complicated and messy.
jamal-kumar 4y ago
I hear this pretty much every time that it's brought up around Europeans, and I was thinking about what it would take for us to change this. I think the biggest issue is that you'd have to somehow get the private property rights sorted out in order to dig up thousands and thousands of people's front yards, and that's probably the biggest factor in why we keep on letting this happen to ourselves. It's kinda like the biggest challenge is NIMBYism (Not in my backyard-ism) but front yard instead. The other comments talk about technical challenges but at least you guys aren't massively on fire every year. You would think that would be compelling or something right?
- MandieD 4y ago
  I currently live in a suburb of a large German city, in a neighborhood packed with row houses and low-rise apartments. My father lives in west Texas in a neighborhood with maybe 50 households, each on their own 1-10 acres, 30 miles from the nearest town. What is the per-household cost to my utility to maintain the buried lines for my neighborhood, versus what would the per-household cost be to my father’s utility to bury the lines to his little neighborhood?
  - Glawen 4y ago
    Lines are buried in big cities, in smaller towns the lines are running from house to house, using roofs instead of poles
  - c_o_n_v_e_x 4y ago
    Since you mentioned Texas... In certain parts of inner Houston, there is still pole mounted power. When hurricanes inevitably roll into town, the parts of town with pole utilities lose power for far longer (days-weeks) than other parts of town with buried utilities (hours-days).
- bombcar 4y ago
  The homeowner stuff is actually easier than it might seem - almost universally the main problem is cost. People with power lines across their property already have an easement and the connection to the pope/box is easy enough to run underground with a pig and little disturbance. Our town has it because the town has its own town-owned power company and they don’t care for multiple callouts during winter. Other older, richer areas nearby don’t have it. Homeowners are generally in favor of it - as it makes the area look nicer and if you do have an easement it’ll drop from like 40 ft to ten or so.

mwint 4y ago

How’d they figure this out? Eyewitnesses?

EdwardDiego 4y ago
On occasion, also a dead possum at the source of ignition. One memorable example, the possum jumped from the power pole into a nearby hedge, so the fire started at the top. Pretty much all wooden power poles in NZ have metal bands on them to try to prevent possums climbing them, but it's not 100% effective.