• vzq@lemmy.world
    291·
    10 days ago

    Overhead transmission lines are so 1950s.

    Invest in your country.

      • aeronmelon@lemmy.world
        11·
        10 days ago

        Japan is slowly burying all their overhead lines into the sidewalks. A lot of urban streets look so much nicer now than they did 10 years ago.

        It’s probably no worse in an earthquake than the water mains, which would inherently be a lot more rigid than cables with intentional slack built into every segment.

    • sharkfinsoup@lemmy.ml
      21·
      10 days ago

      There are benefits of overhead lines. They are cheaper to install, maintain, and repair. Diagnosing problems are much easier as well. They’re certainly uglier and easier to damage but you don’t have to dig up the road to fix them.

      Newer cities shouldn’t install overhead lines but to have old cities with overhead lines switch to underground ones is very expensive and takes a lot of time, something smaller cities likely don’t have the budget for.

      • DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml
        3·
        10 days ago

        You don’t have to dig up the roads to fix buried power lines any more than you have to tear up your walls to replace power lines in your house: you install a conduit (basically a pipe) under the road once and if the cable somehow gets damaged and needs to be replaced you can just run new cable through the existing conduit by simply pushing it in on one end and pulling from the other.

        Transformers and other non-cable equipment are typically housed aboveground in little boxes or built in to the house, so they’re actually easier to maintain than if they were installed aboveground on a pole since you don’t need a cherrypicker to access it.

        Obviously in a less wealthy small town with existing overhead infrastructure it doesn’t make much sense to move it all underground “just because”, but if you’re already trenching under the road to install water/sewage/gas mains, it won’t cost much extra to throw down an additional one or two smaller conduits for running power cables or telephone/cable/fiber lines.

  • weker01@sh.itjust.works
    20·
    9 days ago

    I know it’s a very unpopular opinion but I actually like the aesthetics of infrastructure and industry.

    When I see a steel mill, an oil rig or powerplants like wind parks, hydro- or nuclear power I am reminded of the human ingenuity that went into it. How many people needed to band together to work on something bigger than their tribe. I am reminded of our awe inspiring power to shape our environment completely.

    Of course with great power… You know the rest.

    • hangonasecond@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 days ago

      Even though I hate car centric infrastructure, watching a new highway or bypass spring up out of nothing is an incredible testament to our ability to work together to achieve great things

    • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 days ago

      I traveled across Southeast Asia drawing powerline tangles and run-down alleyways in a sketchbook. It’s definitely a thing.

    • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
      1·
      9 days ago

      we have a “wind park” a few miles west of here. i get some of my power from it. slightly less than half of them are inactive at any given time. dunno if its intentional or a rotation scheme. never see any crew trucks around the dead ones

      • LwL@lemmy.world
        5·
        9 days ago

        They have to shut off if there’s too much power in the grid, it might be that

  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
    15·
    10 days ago

    I actually kind of enjoy powerlines and junction boxes. There’s a level of engineering that is both rough and delicate that is magnified by how orderly and chaotic they are alike.

    Now if the power lines are at the expense of a view through trees, that’d be more a bummer. Likewise if the trees remain that’s a hazard waiting to happen, which is also a bummer.

    Buried lines and conduit pipe are preferable in most cases and share similar aesthetic characteristics.

  • Lasherz12@lemmy.world
    6·
    10 days ago

    I think clean power lines look nice. I’d definitely prefer them to a butterfly killing roadway or lighted poles that create light pollution and confuse wildlife.

      • kboy101222@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        43·
        10 days ago

        And have to dig up even more earth using even more big machines? If you did a 50ft power line underground, that’s 50 ft of earth that has to be dug up, not to mention what happens whenever something inevitably goes wrong and you have to dig it all up again. Then you also have to bury transformers, which means you need to cool them.

        There’s many, many good reasons that we use power lines over burying them. Mostly, power lines are so significantly cheaper and easier that it’s not even comparable. I’ve seen the bill when a buried fiber line gets broken. It is crazy expensive.

        • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          10 days ago

          PG&E has been having to cut off power for swaths of customers in California every time we get in a red-flag fire weather situation, because their power lines over the mountains sway and spark and have caused horrendous wildfires. Notably the Camp Fire that completely destroyed the town of Paradise, killing over 85 people and thousands of animals. It’s been pretty expensive for them. Of course, they saved money for decades by skimping on maintenance, but that all went in their executives’ pockets, so they’re having trouble with trying to get up to code and pay their court costs and fines

      • MissJinx@lemmy.world
        12·
        10 days ago

        Different countries have different needs. In the US you have hurricanes so it makes sense to.protect the power lines above ground, but here we just had a flood, do you want us to loose power for months everytime it rains a lot? It makes a lot nore sense to us to have it above ground.