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More expensive is an understatement, I think it costs like 10x more to put them underground. It's also very difficult and disruptive in dense areas where there'
by burkaman 2y ago
More expensive is an understatement, I think it costs like 10x more to put them underground. It's also very difficult and disruptive in dense areas where there's all sorts of pipes and cables already there.
That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, and some of their network is already underground, but the reason it isn't universal is that it genuinely is very hard to do.
- bigbacaloa 2y ago[dead]
- alexey-salmin 2y agoWell, still less expensive than power outage i.e. economy outage. Losses must be enormous, logically you should be happy to pay 10x for underground cables.
- kelnos 2y agoLogically, yes. But that's seldom how things go. Burying the wires would be a major capital expenditure. Bonds need to be issued, depending on the municipality, voters may need to get involved. Shareholders, where applicable, don't like it. Yes, the cost for repair is high, but that's part of the operating budget, and each instance of repair is much cheaper than the cable-burying project, so the cost is "amortized" in a weird way that seems more palatable. Meanwhile, the utility isn't held responsible for the economic costs related to the outage, so they don't care about those costs. Even in California, where the utility has been found liable when their infrastructure starts wildfires that kill people, they still aren't doing massive cable-burying projects. I don't agree with it. I think it's stupid and short-sighted. But there are reasons. Most of them start with "c" and end with "apitalism".
- skybrian 2y agoIn rural areas, battery backup might be cheaper than upgrading the grid. Or at least that’s what they plan to do in Vermont.
- FireBeyond 2y agoThe last estimate I saw was $2B. This event is likely to or already has exceeded that in losses. It's not cheap. Neither is this repair cycle.