| >expensive in the long run due to pole replacement and tree maintenance, Not compared to burial. The cost is up front (not amortized) and is a big enough multiplier that it won't overcome maintenance costs, especially when including buried repair/maintenance costs, which are significantly higher than overhead, even taking into account the lower frequency. (Tree roots, dug-up lines, cathodic decay and leaking conduits, necessary relocations, etc, all happen.) There's nothing preventing the adoption of buried electrical today except the customer's willingness to pay for it. New neighborhoods and houses that want it, pay for it. Simple as that. And nothing prevents replacing existing overhead except it becomes a 100% unnecessary cost, once overhead has already been installed. >...and all it takes is a slight increase in capital expenses for installation to replace them with underground >slight 4-10x upfront install cost. Higher in urban environments. Not slight. If it paid for itself as you claim, why are companies almost universally making an irrationally expensive decision? |
> If it paid for itself as you claim, why are companies almost universally making an irrationally expensive decision?
I don't think he made such a claim. There's an implication that it's 'worth it', but not that it's necessarily less expensive to implement.
Companies aren't making irrational decisions. They just haven't historically been paying for the externalities.