It seems kind of primitive to have power lines just hanging on poles, right?
Bit unsightly too
Is it just a cost issue and is it actually significant when considering the cost of power loss on society (work, hospital, food, etc)?
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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It's roughly 5-7 times as expensive per km to bury the cables. It's mainly a cost issue.
It makes sense in dense areas, it does not make sense everywhere. Critical infrastructure has backup power anyway because digging does not solve all reliability issues.
Here in Aroostook county Maine I can tell you I have yet to see anywhere that didn’t have everything on telephone poles. Not that I can recall anyway.
Converting existing (and i hope working) infra has its own problems too and unless its absolutelly necessary it often gets sidelined.
You cant just dig a trench and drop the lines there. You need to make sure roadsides have enough space and if at any point it would require purchasing or getting permit from land owners it will get quickly complicate. Especially if there are many different owners on the stretch.
There needs to also be plans and precautions to secure that the electricity wont be cut for too long time during the work.
Also the road sides migh need to be cleaned from any vegetation and stones that might be big enough to be problem, not to mention the road it self might need additional work if its badly kept or if they need to widen it and that all rounds back to making sure there is enough space.
Its much easier to build underground cables from the get go, than change infrastructure that was build with telephone poles in mind.
And you can have aerial fiber 😁. That's how france "fibred" the countryside.
Though in development of an area you probably already dig up the ground for other utilities, so in that case it is relatively easy and cheap to also put electricity lines in there too. But retrofitting in an already developed area is really expensive. So it becomes more a question of the default.
Where did you get your numbers?
I found 2-3x and it's quoating it as $5-$15 per foot vs $10-$25
https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/om-transmissionsnatet/teknik/fragor-och-svar-teknik/faq-teknik/vad-kostar-nergravd-kabel-jamfort-med-ledningar-i-luften/
https://benhopkinson.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-burying-our-grid
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/costs-and-benefits-of-overhead-underground-offshore-power-transmission-weighed-up-by-iet-29-04-2025/
The second one has a link to an actual study on pricing. That study indicates directed buried is twice as expensive.
It's also has numbers on tunnel buried which is five times more expensive. Which makes sense but also means there is now a tunnel.