In areas that get a lot of hurricanes like New Orleans, why isn’t most of the electricity run underground where it’s less vulnerable by now?
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Politics. Politicians have a hard time selling a long term infrastructure plan like going UG for electrical. When you take into cost how often all the overhead lines get absolutely wrecked, UG would probably be cheaper. Most new construction is UG cause it’s easier and cheaper to throw it in when a neighborhoods still getting constructed. Rough numbers, overhead is close to 5-10 bucks per LF while underground is about 20-40. So 4x the amount but your maintaince costs is much lower since you’re not worried about underground hurricanes, if they exist.
And about the water table, the line won’t get “flooded” or “shorted” as often as people think. There’s plenty cities and even countries (Netherlands) where <14kv electrical lines get runned underground without as much problems as people in the comments say there will be. People have already slowly started paying the premium for UG services off easement poles, just a matter of time before those easement poles go UG as well.
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