Quote:
Originally Posted by Colly0410
When I was in the USA in most of the urban & suburban areas the low voltage supply was overhead lines with small pole mounted transformers feeding 1 or 2 houses, only the newest housing developments were supplied by underground lines. Anyone know why there's a difference?
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Actually, the real reason most of our power lines are above ground on poles in the US (in major cities), is simply because that's the way we're used to doing it. The original
reason why we started this, goes all the way back to the birth of centralized power generation.
/me leans back in arm chair and blows into bubble pipe.
You see, before there were 'utilities,' there was only one utility: gas. Gas in those days was called 'gas light' because that's just about all anybody used it for. It was only just starting to expand into the territory of stoves and perhaps a couple oddball things, not even heating yet. Then came the big bad competitor in the field centralized lighting: electricity. Which again, in those days, was considered (for the average consumer) to be only good for lighting homes. A direct competitor to gas light. Gas companies put up a fight.
So it makes more sense to deliver electricity underground, right? Safer, out of the way, not on ugly light poles. Yeah, they thought so too, back in the day. Unfortunately, a lot of gas companies insisted (in court) that they owned the rights to the ground. Which, I mean, they kind of did, right? The cities would've had to permit the laying of the pipes to the gas companies.
Oh well, they figured they'd put it up on poles, like those telegraph contraptions.
So, at present, we're not adverse to underground lines, as you noted, there are places where we have them. It's just that... well... the power companies are - and have been for over a century - equipped to install and maintain lines above ground on utility poles.