bitteroldcoot@piefed.social 1 week ago
In areas prone to severe weather they tend to get buried.
Especially after multiple event trash pole mounted ones.
I use to live in Huntsville Alabama. Between the tornadoes and ice storms Huntsville utilities just gave up and started burying them.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
I’ve lived in areas where they aren’t underground BECAUSE of potential severe weather. The powerlines run through miles of wilderness and are serviced by helicopter. Which doesn’t come out when the weather’s bad. But if they were buried (which would be massively more expensive) they’d tear up lots of wilderness and flood/break regularly due to soil movement and tree growth.
Plus, running conduit through rock is a lot harder than drilling a few holes to mount a pole.
Where I am now? It’s all in conduit under the street beside the storm drains, except where there hasn’t been new development to pay for it. Seems like they have to service the conduits a lot more than the poles though, and fixing a pole line stays out of the way of traffic and takes a couple of minutes, where fixing underground shorts involves blocking off a lane, snaking the cables, and bringing in specialists — takes up to 3 hours for a similar repair.