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Starlink is delivering internet to otherwise off-grid homes... Solar+battery tech has made power lines not only unnecessary, but in some states arguably not wor

Starlink is delivering internet to otherwise off-grid homes... Solar+battery tech has made power lines not only unnecessary, but in some states arguably not worth the fire risk anymore.

mschuster91 4y ago
> Solar+battery tech has made power lines not only unnecessary, but in some states arguably not worth the fire risk anymore. Power lines aren't an inherent fire risk. Unmaintained power lines, however, are. Primarily, you need to maintain clearance from bushes and trees.
- msh 4y ago
  Or bury the cables.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Burying high voltage transmission cables is extremely expensive [1] and usually only done when there is no other choice (such as being in an urban environment, near airports and the likes) as the loss due to capacitance is far greater than on poles. The exception to the "usually only" is, once again, our beloved "german redneck" government in Bavaria who insisted that the new North-South line Südlink got buried on Bavarian soil to quash local NIMBY resistance [2] - at the price of taking ages longer to build and costing ~8x the amount of pole-run lines. [1] see page 64, https://www.amprion.net/Dokumente/Dialog/Downloads/Studien/Erfahrungsbericht-Erdkabel_Oktober-2020.pdf https://www.amprion.net/Dokumente/Dialog/Downloads/Studien/E... [2] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/energiewende-warum-erdkabel-und-wer-bezahlt-die-stromtrassen-ueberhaupt-1.3181453 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/energiewende-warum-erdkab...
    - msh 4y ago
      I think the comment I replied to was referring to normal powerlines for households. Individual solar+batteries is not going to replace high voltage lines.
- pengaru 4y ago
  "This shirt is dry-clean only, which means it's dirty" - Mitch Hedberg