[context: I’m in a small city of 6k people. This stupid town is known for constant power outages due to high wind and snow. Are they stubborn or is it really that hard to switch this small town to underground power so we stop having power outages anytime someone even sneezes?]
In: 38
There’s a difference between relatively low voltage local distribution lines, and the extremely high voltage long-distance distribution lines.
Burying the low voltage local distribution lines (like a few thousand volts) is straightforward and only moderately expensive. You can take some regular cables with normal plastic insulation and just stick ’em in a dumb trench and pile dirt over ’em and it’ll be fine. It’s still a little pricey to do a whole town at once, but it can be done if enough people really want to.
Burying high voltage long distance transmission lines is a whole different thing – we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of volts here. That’s a massive amount of voltage that will arc through almost anything. These are virtually impossible to bury.
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