So Why Don’t We Bury Utility Lines ?

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Each year, hurricanes, snowstorms, and an assortment of other weather events destroy above-ground utility poles. Heavy snow and ice can snap wires. More commonly, ferocious winds topple utility poles themselves, or uproot neighboring trees, which drag nearby wires down with them. In Ridgewood and much of Bergen County we have seen trees fall on power lines  causing outages . this morning  post on a tree falling in the Radburn section of Fair Lawn  taking out power to several homes is just the latest example . The Ridgewood Fire Department has recently sent out a memo urging resident to avoid fallen power lines .

Readers often ask why don’t they put utility lines under ground ?

Undergrounding the lines could reduce the number of hurricane-related outages in some places. But these buried lines bring with them their own problems including a much higher  price tag.

Sources tell the blog it costs significantly more to bury power lines, unless you’re already digging up the ground for another project. Many lines are buried, but much of the grid is still, and will probably remain, above ground.

There are some additional limitations which include maintenance/diagnosis/inspection, thermal load and higher line capacitance. The last one is a big issue as this limits the length of a line.

Underground cables would need some modifications, the most important of which is insulation. Electricity wires are, by their nature, very warm, as they’re channeling currents to and fro. In the open air, this heat can dissipate, but deep in the soil it can’t. That’s why utilities wrapped their underground wires in plastic and surround them with a conduit like oil to keep things from overheating.

You think he roads are bad now repairing underground systems would require the ground would have to be dug up every time there was an outage .