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Snow descending from a structure’s roof resulting in electrical damage
R
Better fix that so it can happen again next year.
C
Wonder if somebody’s buddy in the government got the contract. Nice stream of revenue. I’ve seen videos of people paving over snow in Russia before lol
R
Yep. In my town in Wisconsin, USA -all the residential power lines are underground, so this does not happen.
T
I also live in Wisconsin, but my power lines are not underground. I also live in a house and neighborhood that’s been there since the 1840s so that’s probably got something to do with it.
R
It’s money. We have this problem constantly here and have lobbied for it since the power company’s solution is cutting down trees (which kill the windbreaks and can make storms worse). They’ve flat out said it’s too expensive to bury cables. It’s cheaper and easier to do short term solutions that kick the problem down the line a bit.
R
I am near Madison, WI and power outs are extremely rare. Power lines right outside multi storey buildings are a problem.
M
Where I live also has buried power lines, but most of my city does not. Power goes out around the metro frequently for wind, snow, ice, thunderstorms…. And I kick back and enjoy my electricity through it all without a worry
R
Yeah..same thing here. Last 8 years I have been here – no power outs. Maybe 2-3 “blips” which last literally a few seconds.
M
I had one major power outage when a transformer buried under my street caught fire. We lived on a huge generator powering the building for a month. I’m honestly not even sure I remember any blips. If they happened, I was not home or did not commit to memory haha
F
Yea those portable 100-200kw diesel or turbine generators that you can get (some of the turbines will run on both diesel or kerosene/jet-A, as well as LPG or NG with a bit of extra hardware) are surprisingly affordable. I was looking around a few years ago and you could get a chinese turbine that runs on natural gas for a few grand on Alibaba. For a proper Cummins watercooled diesel that you know you can trust, those are like 40 grand, which is not that expensive for what they can do and their duty cycle, just haul it anywhere and set up shop no questions asked, runs off the stuff down at the pump where you fill up your truck so it’s easy to cart out for a festival, or set up when an entire apartment building needs power on short notice temporarily. The turbine I mentioned is meant for more permanent installations obviously, where you can pipe in the gas to run it.
G
My lines go above ground at the end of my block… Thankfully, the neighborhood grid is pretty solid, and large scale outages are rare.
T
I live south of GB in a small city on the lakeshore, so no “metro” area really to speak of and what multistorey buildings we have are in the “downtown” area or are apartment buildings that all have underground power. It’s really just in residential neighborhoods like mine that have been there since the city was founded. I’ve personally not experienced a black out due to snow, wind, or rain in my 5 years of owning my house and having above ground power. We do have municipal water and electricity so that might have something to do with it, but who knows.
C
I live a little northeast of GB and the local utility is aggressive about trimming trees back from the lines. Burying the lines would be tough with the bedrock I guess, but the crews will come out an assess a tree for free and even chop it up into sections that will be easy to split into firewood if you ask. After living in DC where it can take a bit of persuasion to get PEPCO to come out and check a tree, this was an amazing change.
T
Yeah my municipality goes around and trims all the trees for free every spring. I’ve never had to ask for more so idk if they’d chop it up for me but the free trimming is nice.
S
Europe has neighbourhoods that have been around since before the US founding fathers. Still have underground power cables.
B
“wE uSe OuR tAx MoNeY tO mOdErNiZe OuR iNfRaStRuCtUrE!” Must be nice.
S
Just stop voting for billionaires’ friends.
N
Not sure why you think it matters who we vote for since it doesn’t seem to change anything. The system is rigged. We haven’t had any real infrastructure investment since the interstate system was completed in the late 60’s. Everything we have is over 50+ years old with spot repairs. It’s sad as hell.
B
So, don’t vote? We saw where that gets us. I voted for Bernie when he ran in the primaries. I vote for progressive candidates at the local level. Any other suggestions?
S
Fix your political system? I don’t know. The US is broken. It may well be too late.
B
>Fix your political system? We’ve already established that much. I’m still waiting on the suggestions.
G
Above ground lines are way easier to fix. Other than being ugly, they make sense in warm climates.
B
>Above ground lines are way easier to fix But do they have to be fixed as often? Genuine question as I don’t know. Edit: Someone read this question and said “I don’t like that they asked *that!*” Lol
G
Way more. But short power outages are a far smaller issue. They can re-hang an above ground wire in just a few hours. Your house doesn’t heat or cool a ton, your freezer doesn’t thaw, etc. If it’s winter, your pipes won’t freeze. This is different in colder climates where ice damage can overwhelm the ability of the power company to respond to all damage, but repairing an overhead line after a tree falls is trivial once the tree is out of the way. At least here, they have solid steel cables running with the power line, so the lines hardly ever even break.
S
> wE uSe OuR tAx MoNeY tO mOdErNiZe OuR iNfRaStRuCtUrE I always read text like this in Bobcat Goldthwait’s voice.
S
Buried power lines are a new city vs old city or sparse vs compact thing most of the time. It’s much harder to bury electrical lines when you’ve got several hundred years of history underground, and/or everything is very densely built
S
Yes, that’s why London only has overhead power lines. (Just to be clear, London’s power lines are all buried under the roads and pavements).
P
Even just for aesthetics. Overhead lines are ugly. I work in electrical, I understand it’s much easier to fault find and repair overhead lines. But UG ones get damaged much less often. And generally when one gets smashed by an excavator, well you have a pretty good idea where the problem is lol.
S
I said harder not impossible, and most not all. They’ve also got a robust subway system to help facilitate it.
J
> I said harder not impossible, and most not all. Rome, a nearly 3.000 years old city, has buried utilities. As practically every Italian city.
S
The subway has nothing to do with power distribution. Most of it is far too deep.
G
I assume he’s talking about NYC where nobody has the faintest clue what’s underground.
A
i feel it’s the opposite? like a lot of dense old cities are underground and rural less dense are above ground. also above ground is cheaper to maintain so it’s more economically viable to do it in dense areas.
L
European here. City age or density has nothing to do with it. It’s a money thing. Underground is more expensive in both installation and maintenance. Amsterdam has it all buried, so does The Hague and Utrecht, and literally all old cities in NL (all of NL in fact, even rural spots), BE, DE, FR, Etc. All places with 750 or more years of underground crap. heck in Paris the underground crap was a bonus. some of the lines go through the famous catacombs. Those cables you saw when on holiday are for old fashioned tram lines and as such only exist in streets where a tram drives through. These trams do not have a third rail for power, they have a bracket thing on top that makes contact with the wires for power. You wont see overhead power/phone/etc for housing, that’s all underground even in medieval cities, even under old roman constructions if they are still in use. All these cities are also very compact and dense with tiny streets that sometimes do not even fit a standard car. It just takes longer, that’s all.
M
Something I haven’t seen mentioned in the comments is how in the USA, the grid is almost completely AC. AC power transmission has a potential for latent power loss to the ground through the interaction of the fields surrounding the conductors. Keeping them further from the ground helps reduce power transmission losses. I know parts of Europe have been transitioning to HVDC, which ultimately prevents transmission losses to the ground. Making the wires practical to bury without needing to concern for efficiency.
S
I think the key is cost benefit. What OP was describing is essentially that older areas of cities in the US, especially residential areas, have little incentive to spend the money to move the current existing structure underground, where newer places by default build it underground. At some point, you hit infrastructure restrictions where it makes sense to spend the money to move it underground as you describe. But both yours and the comment you replied to are inherently true. New areas tend to have everything build underground, and having above ground electrical infrastructure is a property of older infrastructure, up to a point. However, where the infrastructure demands moving it underground, it’s expensive (as you suggest) to retrofit it underground because (as OP says) there is a lot of history and infrastructure underground that you have to work around. So it’s a cost issue, but the cost is a result of the historical infrastructure that’s already in place. You see this in the city I grew up in (Canada is very similar). Subdivisions built in the 80s and onward all have their electrical underground. Subdivisions built prior than that predominantly have it above ground, however industrial areas and the city centre which is arguably the oldest area predominantly have it underground, at least until you get far enough away that the building height and density drops off at which point it is all above ground (depending on age).
G
The other thing is that your block/neighborhood generally has to pay to bury lines in the US.
S
New York City (meaning Manhattan and the Annexed District (later called the Bronx) which was all there was at the time) outlawed all overhead wiring after the Blizzard of 1888; not just electric, but telegraph and telephone as well. In the Financial District there were poles with upwards of 30 cross trees, with 10 wires on each crosstree, and most of that came down in the snow. Nowadays there aren’t any wires visible in Manhattan. In Brooklyn, electric wiring is buried as well, but low voltage stuff like telephone, cable TV, or fiber is still on poles. Of course the technology wasn’t always there to support the new underground wiring. Often the insulation would crack and there would be stray voltage in the sidewalks, zapping unsuspecting passersby. Unscrupulous used-horse dealers knew where these patches were and would lead their broken-down old screws over them to show prospective buyers how energetically they’d prance around.
G
And trams have to be powered from above for safety reasons. Ugly as skit, but beats diesel/gas busses.
V
It is harder still if you refuse to even consider burying them.
B
No, it just depends on whether the city cared enough. NYC decided to bury their power lines in 1889 after a bad blizzard interrupted power. Jersey City across the river, just as old and dense, still has not.
F
No it isn’t, LMAO. Europe has most lines underground… and roof designs where this doesn’t happen in the first place.
S
It’s easier to justify the cost of burying power lines in dense places. Same amount of digging serves many more households
P
Underground power was not a huge reason why I chose my house but was certainly a consideration. That and being 3 blocks from the local substation, I’m hoping I’ll be spared in our upcoming ice storm.
M
Bro I lived in Wisconsin for 22 years. Not once did we lose power during a storm, and I lived in shit places where the homes are old as fuck and the infrastructure was garbage First year in NC and everyone is afraid power will go out from the storm. We’ve lost power almost every time it’s rained. This place fucking blows for infrastructure. I hate Wisconsin, but they got one thing right
V
Job security 😉
B
“Sorry I can’t come in today, there was an avalanche on my roof”
H
And now there’s a bunch of live wires in it too
G
Electric Avalanche was the name of my techno band back in college.
R
Also a great sports drink flavor
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