California power lines spark wildfires and prompt blackouts. Why not bury them? | Hacker News Reader

California power lines spark wildfires and prompt blackouts. Why not bury them?

usatoday.com

> A report prepared by the Edison Electric Institute, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind, An Updated Study on the Undergrounding of Overhead Power Lines,” found that while most new commercial and residential developments across the United States tuck electrical facilities underground, burying existing above-ground electric distribution systems can cost up to $5 million a mile in urban areas.

They've linked to 2009 version of this report, although the numbers they use are from the 2012 version. If that confused anyone else, the 2012 version can be found here:

https://www.eei.org/issuesandpolicy/electricreliability/unde...

Burying AC power lines causes them to incur higher losses than aerial, as the alternating current interacts with the surrounding earth. This generates heat in the insulation and eventually the insulation will fail. Our neighborhood recently had the lines dug up and replace due to this - they were 35 years old. The aerial lines to the neighborhood are much older and have never been replaced.

To get around this, you can go HVDC, but that really only makes sense when you have a long distance line. Pretty pricey.

Varmints like gophers will dig down, encounter a power line, and then attempt to dig through it. Those are fun to repair.

Also, varmints with backhoes have been known to take them out.

Yet another idiotic, ignorant conflation between HV distribution lines, which CANNOT be buried (not without lots of cost-prohibitive infrastructure), with local distribution lines, which CAN be buried. Hell, why not just pipe in hydrogen or methane ONLY to homes and generate power at the neighborhood level, and skip the losses and dangers incurred by inter-(regional/state/national) HV distribution? Then those lines, at 208-380V range from local generation over short distances can be easily buried as many are now. No more power going out from stormy, windy, icy, hot or dry conditions, same check underground utilities maps before digging process. It's much safer to pump around high energy-density LP fuels than maintain top-down, nonredundant electrical grids that cause fires, go down and take out hundreds of thousands of customers, are inherently risky to lives and property, and require constant and extensive arboreal maintenance.

Hmmm, how does the gas company afford to bury the gas pipes then ? If it's cost prohibitive for electric lines why does it pan out for gas ?

Overhead gas lines aren't an option.

Gas pipes are overhead in much of eastern europe.

Looks kind of odd to see the whole city covered in what looks like scaffolding, but it's actually gas pipes and supporting pipes going down to every house.

Gas mains, or just feeder pipes to individual buildings or neighborhoods?

Both. Not sure why they do it - perhaps because the ground is frozen? Or because an above ground gas pipe is easier to inspect and repair?

The bigger question to me, is why doesn't the US do combined gas/electricy/... trenches accessible by manholes, like you can see in most northern European cities? Is it just economic shortsightedness or does it have to do with density (or rather US cities being the opposite of dense)?

(yes there are regulations on minimum distance between electricity and gas pipes, so these trenches have to be pretty big)

> Hmmm, how does the gas company afford to bury the gas pipes then ?

According to Wikipedia, pipelines tend to be buried because soil acts as a thermal insulator, thus reducing thermal fatigue and consequently maintenance costs.

Electricity isn't transported through pressurized pipes, thus it isn't subjected to the same constraints.

Actually, most existing underground transmission cables run through pressurized pipes full of oil. Look up HPFF; it's pretty wild.

Newer cables tend to be solid, though.

tl;dr: It would cost $243 billion, or $15,000 for every customer. Also makes repairs a pain in the ass.

Burying cable would cost more than building 25K kilometers of fast rail in China, sure, that totally checks out.

a gazillion, trillion, million permits of all kind, cost of labor, land buyouts. Compare them to China

You must be new here. Infrastructure costs in the US are a staggering multiple of costs in the rest of the OECD, let alone places with price levels as low as China.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com