
California power lines spark wildfires&prompt blackouts. Why not just bury them? - sahin-boydas
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/11/bury-california-power-lines-wildfire-blackout-fix-unlikely-work/3946935002/
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m463
I'm reminded of the awesome engineering story about replacing a high powered
buried cable in Los Angeles years ago.

Here's a link to the story (one step removed because of hacker news vs jwz)

[https://hackaday.com/2015/07/27/find-and-
repair-a-230kv-800a...](https://hackaday.com/2015/07/27/find-and-
repair-a-230kv-800amp-oil-filled-power-cable-feels-like-mission-impossible/)

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aurizon
Why not pay ten times the cost of overhead wires - to save on legal awards...

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rolph
why not pay a tenth the cost of legal awards to bury them?

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aurizon
Costs are huge in rocky ground to bury high voltage wires. Low voltage (120 to
240) is less. This deals with it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undergrounding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undergrounding)

The largest barrier to safe rural wiring in California is the huge wage,
benefits and pension costs which is on the order of $80-100 per hour, a
position that politicians reached because the politicians did not care as long
as they paid themselves very well. Huge areas are running huge unfunded
pension positions cause by the lack of laws mandating 100% funding of all
pensions every fiscal year end. Some states have these laws. These places are
balanced and have lower pensions because the politicians were stiffened. Look
at Detroit, Chicago and many others - dead men walking...

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tomohawk
Underground lines are subject to animals burrowing through them, backhoes
digging them up, etc.

If the power is transmitted AC, then the insulation gets heated up as the
alternating current interacts with the surrounding ground. If the ground is
below the water table, the losses get high. The underground power cables in
our neighborhood are in wet ground, and recently had to be dug up because the
insulation failed.

In Norway, they use DC to transmit power out to oil platforms as it does not
have this problem.

