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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sweden hasn't had residential power lines on poles since like the 70's. when i visited north america in 2008 i was shocked by the aerial rats' nests everywhere.
Meanwhile as an American Japan shocked me with their electrical situation. Modern buildings just running wires openly along the walls and even urban areas having overhead wiring
Japan is one of the exceptions though, they get a lot of earthquakes.
That's because of the harsh climate though? Cheaper to pay more for digged cables than constantly repair aerial lines? At least it alleviates the cost.
i mean we still have aerial lines for high voltage.
Sure, but the cheap wooden low voltage that got wrecked in storms are gone.
we don't really get storms like that.
Duh, I grew up in Sweden and we had the occasional outage. But that was before they buried the lines.
Area of Sweden 73,860 sq mi
Area of the USA 3,531,839 sq mi
Population of Sweden: 10.6 million
Population of the USA: 340.1 million
So the population density is very similar and I therefore don't understand what you're getting at.
Americans loooooooooooooooove pointing out at their population density as a thought-terminating cliché although it's very rarely relevant to any discussion.
The size of your continent does not influence the size of your metro areas, dipshits. LA isn't the way it is because Wyoming is empty, LA is the way it is because a bunch of dumbasses decided that local mass transit and terraced housing should be outlawed and bulldozed in order to fuck over African-Americans communities.
okay? we don't bury high-voltage lines, if that's what you're implying.
It's easy when nearly all of your population lives in a third of your landmass mostly in the south. We're still talking about residential. Most of our cities and towns are also not walkable if that gives you an estimate of how spread out we are even in urban areas here.
Besides it took laws for power companies to get the last rural communities and families. I remember my grandparents talking about it. Honestly the better investment would be putting up solar panels cut off from the grid with battery banks to cover the most rural over here.
all the power generation is in the north
I thought we were talking about residential lines, not transmission lines.
then why does geographical location matter?
Population density matters:
is there supposed to be an image in your comment? anyway, some more specific numbers then.
the stockholm region, the most populated area of sweden, is a bit less than twice the size of the city of houston TX, with about the same population of 2.3 million people. but the population density of the area is about 1/4th that of houston, at 380/km^2^ compared to 1400.
meanwhile the norrbotten region, the most sparsely populated area, is just above alaska in population density.
I mean there's a cost per mile to lay cable underground, and that cost per customer goes down when the population density is higher, which it is in all of Europe compared to the US.
the us has higher population density than sweden.
In certain areas. But most of the us has a rather low density. You don't see above ground lines in most US cities.
I really don't understand that argument. So is most of the US not connected to the sewers? Since these are also dug underground. If you already dig trenches for the sewer system, then you can also place electricity lines for relatively cheap. Though that was not done in the US and retrofitting is a big cost, usually only done, when you need to dig either way (e.g. for modernizing the sewer system). So its more about the default and if a country can take the opportunity when sewers get modernized
Yeah, there's quite a bit of residential on septic tanks here. Incorporated towns is usually the line where public sewer exists. Before you ask, not every home here is on municipal water either nor natural gas. I remember a family growing up that got water deliveries for their cistern if their well ever ran dry. My childhood home had a giant propane tank for our gas appliances and a septic tank system because we lived on the other side of an interstate highway even though we lived "within the city limits". I remember dad always saying it was difficult for the utilities to bore under the interstate to get the handful of homes (maybe 50 of us?) in the city limits on the other side. More homes in the USA have access to power than municipal water, moreso than natural gas, and much moreso than public sewer. Like I said elsewhere, we are really spread out. This guy really puts it into perspective
my family's house is in a village of around seven households. we have our own well and septic tank. power lines are still underground.
The other half of this equation is for a bunch of rural power here in the US are handled by co-ops. So the people paying for the infrastructure directly are same people that pay the power bill. If the people don't want to pay for it, they aren't going to build it out. It's why I believe the best solution for these homes would be to solar panels and battery banks.
that also sounds like sweden
You have no idea how infrastructure is built.
This is literally what we do in the Netherlands though. There's a bigger and bigger push to group underground works from multiple parties to reduce cost and nuisance
just like sweden.
https://wprices.com/energy-prices/household-electricity-prices-in-europe/
Sweden has residential electricity prices at $0.2768/kWh.
https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/
The US averages $0.1798/kWh.
The price of electricity in a country usually has nothing to do with whether power lines are run above or below the ground. Very often a large part of your electricity price is determined by taxes and subsidies for example. And in my country (the Netherlands) the suppliers of electricity are different companies than the ones responsible for the power network too. Like Sweden we haven't had residential power lines running above ground for half a century or so, it's pretty uncommon in (Western?) Europe.
Infrastructure is a huge part of electricity prices.
I think in most of Europe, the cost of the actual electricity and the delivery of the electricity (i.e the infrastructure cost) is split into two different costs. Not sure if the price cited above includes both.
If that is the case than your costs are incredibly higher.
Ditto Germany. We just have the big pylons running from the hydroelectric wossname in the Rhine.
idk where that place pulls from but i pay $.08/kWh. when i lived further north it was $0.02.
there was a period where the prices went to what you quoted but that was in connection to the nord stream sabotage where germany's prices skyrocketed and ours were dragged up along with them.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics
Here's the European Commission.
okay? i'm just checking my power bills.
That may be true. I'm just telling you that if so, it doesn't reflect Sweden as a whole.
sweden is split into four "electricity zones", from north to south. the prices seem to match those in zone 4, in the very very south.
Edit:
https://elen.nu/
here is the current price for each zone in öre/kWh (an öre is 1/100th of a krona). divide by 10 and you get cents, ish.
for reference the current spot price when converted is $0.12/kWh. more than i pay but i have a fixed kWh price.
Well yeah, it's quite easy to keep your energy prices low when you
And yet, the US pays normal market rates for crude like everyone else.
I accept the cost-benefits analysis and wish to proceed on this quote.
That could be it.
Digging isn't free in Sweden either, right? Maybe OP thinks they're ugly, but sometimes good enough is good enough.
That has nothing to do with the power lines