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Comment by rtkwe | Hacker News Reader

What's the alternative. Burying them is arguably more dangerous because the insulation failing would make the area immensely dangerous with no obvious signs. The power needs to get from generation to consumer somehow and high voltage lines are good for long distances.

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For an incredible read about just how bizarre fixing underground power distribution can become, check out this classic: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/

Here's the tl;dr version: https://hackaday.com/2015/07/27/find-and-repair-a-230kv-800a...

Haha a jwz link those are great.

For those that don't know, you can get around jwz's referrer redirection by opening the link incongnito.

Make sure you copy and paste the jwz link, just clicking it redirects to an imgur picture.

I never knew I could be enthralled by a faulty power line. What a story!

Can someone explain to a software person why this wouldn't basically just ground the power?

At the voltages involved in power transmission the "grounding" will cause an arc that'll do a lot of damage and take the transmission line out of service until it's dug up and fixed. And that takes awhile and costs a lot of money not to mention lost revenue while the transmission line is out of service.

Above ground is the way to go since it's cheaper to construct and much easier to service when things go wrong.

Grounding doesn't make the electricity magically disappear - for large voltages and currents, it's difficult to dissipate.

For example, if you'd simply stick a high voltage line into the ground, then there would be a voltage gradient between the ground voltage far away and (almost) the line voltage directly at the place where you stuck it; and since the earth isn't a very good conductor (compared to e.g. yourself), if you walk towards it, then the "step voltage" between your leg closest to the wire and the other leg can be sufficient to kill you.

If you do ever find yourself in that kind of situation (powerline draped over vehicle or similar), solution one, the way to go, is "don't exit the vehicle".

That being unavoidable (vehicle on fire, etc.), don't walk away from the vehicle, jump, two feet at a time, and keep jumping that way, until you're a good distance away. This avoids you ending in a situation where you have that step voltage between the voltage rings.

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