Quote:
Originally Posted by Evans, Marv
The great satisfaction for me having solar is not paying SDG&E a dime. I'm about half way through the period where it should pay for itself. Some Swiss friends of mine were here last year and said something I'd never thought of. They lived here in the early '70s while attending grad school, so they are familiar with the U.S. having traveled around the country extensively. During dinner, he commented he doesn't see how a country as rich and powerful as the U.S. still has telephone and power poles sticking up everywhere with overhead lines all over the place. I can imagine it might not be so cost efficient out in rural areas where distances are great, but it would solve lots of problems.
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actually underground of utilities in rural areas would be less complicated than in suburban areas. there's already a ton of underground infrastructure in densely populated areas that would have to be worked around and many agencies have spotty records at best so design of routing is a crap shoot. digging up yards to take what was a line drop residence to an underground system gets complicated. you have all the landscaping, stamped concrete driveways, fences, to traverse not to mention the paving and sidewalk trench restoration. frankly it really not practical coming from a public agency's engineering/public work division.
not saying rural area would be easy, just less complicated and fewer customers to please with restoration of their property. frankly rural area undergrounding would have greater upside in regards to value, ie, fire prevention.