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Its hilarious city folks think rural power is subsidized. I recently extended a line about 1000 feet. For this, I paid $13000 -- primary transmission, poles,
by ty6853 2y ago
Its hilarious city folks think rural power is subsidized.
I recently extended a line about 1000 feet. For this, I paid $13000 -- primary transmission, poles, anchors, electricians, transformers, all at full rates. And it was a required donation, as in the power coop owns everything and it goes on public easement on to the next guy when they extend from mine. When they finished, I worked myself silly digging secondary transmission to where I was used on the property.
It is the other way around, rural people shoulder the costs of massive mileage of the grid extension that aid intercity networking. The costs are privatized but the benefits are socialized.
- jncfhnb 2y agoThe cost of installing that stuff is way more than 13k
- ty6853 2y agoThen they committed fraud.
- jncfhnb 2y agoI’m not sure you read that correctly. You paid far less than the total cost of installing that infrastructure.
- ty6853 2y agoThe articles of my coop require someone extending a line to pay the full unsubsidized costs before installation. If I underpaid the coop defrauded the other members by charging them instead.
- sgarland 2y agoOn the flip side, practically everything else about rural areas is subsidized. Most crops have price floors. Dairy is massively subsidized. Rural school districts siphon funding from cities. Much / all of this is arguably necessary for national security viz. food production, but I dislike when people in red states (not saying you’ve done this, just making a tangential point) make comments like, “let’s see how long the city lasts if we stop exporting food.” Uhhh how long do you think you’d last without practically every aspect of your life being subsidized? We need both groups in the country, and we need to support each other as each needs, but part of that dynamic being healthy means acknowledging that we’re receiving help.
- jeffbee 2y agoYou guys are talking about a totally different "rural" than I was. Look, food in 2025 comes from gigantic horizontal factories and there is no way to avoid that. A food-producing region of California looks like [1]. An exclave of Libertarian weirdos LARPing as the Unabomber looks like [2]. It is the latter that is problematic in terms of provision of infrastructure. 1: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.4301203,-122.0649005,3a,60y,53.5h,91.66t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1snJH-qIobm_32dWmM4mCCVA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-1.6601273576112447%26panoid%3DnJH-qIobm_32dWmM4mCCVA%26yaw%3D53.50012109953798!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDIwNS4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@39.4301203,-122.0649005,3a,60y,... 2: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.3962909,-120.5056754,3a,75y,309.51h,89.54t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sWQD-tdmk4u7WwA55acbnuw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D0.4617135601942266%26panoid%3DWQD-tdmk4u7WwA55acbnuw%26yaw%3D309.5052781444213!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDIwNS4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@38.3962909,-120.5056754,3a,75y,...
- J_Shelby_J 2y agoAren’t you making the case for the OP? That it cost so much to extend a line for a thousand feet… how about the thousands of miles of lines it takes to service rural users? The same is true for all infrastructure in that it gets less expensive per user as density increases. The cost to hook up an apartment building to the grid is a few houses in a suburb but services 10x the people at the same revenue per person. The cost to service a single home in a rural area might wipe the revenue out from a dozen apartments. Frankly, I’m sick of subsidizing the rural welfare crowd. Let them pay the market price for their roads and utilities if they want to cosplay as Galt gulchers.
- ty6853 2y agoYes we have no public roads either for miles. Privately maintained easements instead. I built mine first with just an axe and shovels, later with a backhoe. Sewer is private septic. Water we had to dig a private well. The electric coop is paid for by users at full cost by their own extensions. This works amazing as taxes and subsidies are basically zero. You pay for what you use.