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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

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.

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.