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They don’t cut down the trees, they trim them. Often with crazy helicopter chainsaws. Transmission lines tend to be in difficult to reach, undeveloped areas. Th

They don’t cut down the trees, they trim them. Often with crazy helicopter chainsaws. Transmission lines tend to be in difficult to reach, undeveloped areas. They’re often not owned by the power company but rather used with easements. The power company might not be a generation company either. Building the hookup for thin lines of solar panels might not be cost effective either.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> They don’t cut down the trees, they trim them. They cut down any trees within a certain number of feet of the power lines. This is done when the power lines are installed. Then they come back and periodically trim any trees that grow laterally into that area. > Transmission lines tend to be in difficult to reach, undeveloped areas. Not unlike agricultural land. Also not really true. Transmission lines tend to be near population centers, in order to supply power to them. There are more transmission lines per square mile in, say, New Jersey than there are in Montana. > They’re often not owned by the power company but rather used with easements. Enough of them are owned by the power company that we certainly haven't used them all yet. > The power company might not be a generation company either. In which case they could become one, or lease the land to one, which is free money to the power company but still a low price to the buyer because of the limited number of competing uses. > Building the hookup for thin lines of solar panels might not be cost effective either. Unclear what the layout has to do with anything. It's obviously possible to transfer an arbitrarily large amount of electricity in a straight line. If trying to minimize the number of inverters, panels could be wired in series to raise the DC voltage to whatever is appropriate to reach the distance to the inverter.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Mostly just the difficult to reach thing. “Near population centers” is still routing through awkward areas. It’s not parallel to roads like distribution systems. Hence the use of helicopter chainsaws to trim them. Utility PV is nice single areas filled with panels. Maybe it could make sense. But with solar development being as aggressive as it is right now it seems unlikely that folks are just missing this idea.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > Mostly just the difficult to reach thing. But then you're just referring to specific subsets of them in heavily rural areas. The transmission lines that run parallel to I-95 or the 101 are not particularly difficult to get to.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      I respectfully disagree. Those are a pain in the ass to get to. These things tend to get aerially inspected for a reason. I would definitely not want to be sending out contractor crews to off-road locations for something as low value as a short stretch of solar panels.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> They don’t cut down the trees, they trim them. They cut down any trees within a certain number of feet of the power lines. This is done when the power lines are installed. Then they come back and periodically trim any trees that grow laterally into that area. > Transmission lines tend to be in difficult to reach, undeveloped areas. Not unlike agricultural land. Also not really true. Transmission lines tend to be near population centers, in order to supply power to them. There are more transmission lines per square mile in, say, New Jersey than there are in Montana. > They’re often not owned by the power company but rather used with easements. Enough of them are owned by the power company that we certainly haven't used them all yet. > The power company might not be a generation company either. In which case they could become one, or lease the land to one, which is free money to the power company but still a low price to the buyer because of the limited number of competing uses. > Building the hookup for thin lines of solar panels might not be cost effective either. Unclear what the layout has to do with anything. It's obviously possible to transfer an arbitrarily large amount of electricity in a straight line. If trying to minimize the number of inverters, panels could be wired in series to raise the DC voltage to whatever is appropriate to reach the distance to the inverter.

jncfhnb 3y ago
Mostly just the difficult to reach thing. “Near population centers” is still routing through awkward areas. It’s not parallel to roads like distribution systems. Hence the use of helicopter chainsaws to trim them. Utility PV is nice single areas filled with panels. Maybe it could make sense. But with solar development being as aggressive as it is right now it seems unlikely that folks are just missing this idea.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > Mostly just the difficult to reach thing. But then you're just referring to specific subsets of them in heavily rural areas. The transmission lines that run parallel to I-95 or the 101 are not particularly difficult to get to.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    I respectfully disagree. Those are a pain in the ass to get to. These things tend to get aerially inspected for a reason. I would definitely not want to be sending out contractor crews to off-road locations for something as low value as a short stretch of solar panels.