Why can’t they just make the insulation thicker on overhead power lines ?
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In addition to what others have said: insulating very high voltage is ridiculously hard. This voltage tends to break any insulator, and weather, like rain, Sun with UV, winds, temperature changes, etc – all it degrades insulation pretty quickly. With 25kV it only takes tiny crack to make a spark which would evaporate insulator and expand in milliseconds. So you’d have to change thousands of tons of insulation every month or so, which isn’t viable option. There’s underground powerlines for that – they don’t exposed to such harsh condition and at such depth temperatures are almost perfectly stable, so there insulation is an option, but still, it has to be repaired every so often, because, again, it’s really hard to keep such high voltage under control, and any crack in insulation that would allow arcing would expand rapidly and destroy the cable.
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