4 ms·

> Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air > I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken trees and downed wire

> Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air > I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken trees and downed wires and fix it pretty quickly. While power lines above the air are more susceptible to disturbances, they are also FAR easier to deal with.

NortySpock 3y ago
Easier to fix is a real win. Europeans laugh at our cheap 2x4 houses too, but being able to demolish a non-load-bearing wall in two hours and build a different one in a day or two means I can literally reconfigure my house when living situations change -- like the college kid needing a quiet room to study in, or closing off a new bedroom area for the sister-in-law needing to move in for a few months.
- seszett 3y ago
  Non load-bearing walls are usually drywall on wood or metal studs in the Europe I know of. They are probably as easy to remove as your (wooden?) walls, but I don't know anyone who would do it for just a few months.
- mortehu 3y ago
  Easier to fix is a lot more important when things are breaking all the time. This reminds me of people putting water pipes outside the house to make them easier to thaw when they freeze, rather then inside the wall where they never freeze.
apothegm 3y ago
But when they’re buried they require access FAR less frequently. In cities with buried power lines, power loss pretty much only occurs when the entire grid is undersupplied or goes down entirely like in the 2003 blackout. And those situations don’t require access to the buried lines. My city has areas with both buried and above-ground lines, and the above-ground areas see a week or two without power every year or so. Living in the buried-line areas, I haven’t seen an outage since ‘03. There’s one area of the city with buried lines that lost power a while back —- when an entire power plant went offline due to a bad storm. And again, they didn’t have to tear up the streets to fix that.
- Fatnino 3y ago
  Palo Alto is like this. Northern, wealthier, part of the city got all the power lines put underground and then the money for the program "ran out" before they could get around to doing it for the southern, slightly less affluent, areas. Never mind that the whole city paid in to the program. Oh well that just how it goes. So now, in 2024,the power still flickers every time the wind blows and goes down at least an hour a year. And yet, despite all the money pumped into the northern part of the grid, there is still only one connection to the national grid and it's right under the flight path of the airport where a plane already crashed into it once. Whole city, north and south, had no power for 12-ish hours.

NortySpock 3y ago

Easier to fix is a real win. Europeans laugh at our cheap 2x4 houses too, but being able to demolish a non-load-bearing wall in two hours and build a different one in a day or two means I can literally reconfigure my house when living situations change -- like the college kid needing a quiet room to study in, or closing off a new bedroom area for the sister-in-law needing to move in for a few months.

seszett 3y ago
Non load-bearing walls are usually drywall on wood or metal studs in the Europe I know of. They are probably as easy to remove as your (wooden?) walls, but I don't know anyone who would do it for just a few months.
mortehu 3y ago
Easier to fix is a lot more important when things are breaking all the time. This reminds me of people putting water pipes outside the house to make them easier to thaw when they freeze, rather then inside the wall where they never freeze.

apothegm 3y ago

But when they’re buried they require access FAR less frequently. In cities with buried power lines, power loss pretty much only occurs when the entire grid is undersupplied or goes down entirely like in the 2003 blackout. And those situations don’t require access to the buried lines. My city has areas with both buried and above-ground lines, and the above-ground areas see a week or two without power every year or so. Living in the buried-line areas, I haven’t seen an outage since ‘03. There’s one area of the city with buried lines that lost power a while back —- when an entire power plant went offline due to a bad storm. And again, they didn’t have to tear up the streets to fix that.

Fatnino 3y ago
Palo Alto is like this. Northern, wealthier, part of the city got all the power lines put underground and then the money for the program "ran out" before they could get around to doing it for the southern, slightly less affluent, areas. Never mind that the whole city paid in to the program. Oh well that just how it goes. So now, in 2024,the power still flickers every time the wind blows and goes down at least an hour a year. And yet, despite all the money pumped into the northern part of the grid, there is still only one connection to the national grid and it's right under the flight path of the airport where a plane already crashed into it once. Whole city, north and south, had no power for 12-ish hours.