this... has always seemed incredible to me, as in "hard to believe". how many miles of transmission infrastructure can they bury in the remote wooded mountains of california where the wildfires start? the worn hook that caused the paradise fire was out in the open for a decade, and nobody replaced it. if its so hard to get to a metal hook hanging off the pole, how hard is it to literally dig a trench and bury a conductor that, oh yeah, will no longer be getting aircooled and so must either be much larger/more numerous, or be actively cooled somehow, plus then must be dug up in case of maintenance....
i just don't believe it. i think PG&E is using the idea of burying power lines to justify rate increases for capital expenditures, and hopes to never complete (or maybe initiate) these projects, all the while avoiding immediate active responsibility for currently-neglected infrastructure (sorry about that latest wildfire, we are planning to fix this issue by burying all the power lines by 2375!).
I agree re: using it as an excuse to get more money. They generally operate on a ‘cost plus’ type model, use very expensive union labor and their own capital equipment, and seem to always do work in the most absurdly inefficient way possible.
Buried lines are much lower risk of fires and going down in bad storms.
Burying lines is a great way to do it in that cost model too, as a lot of these problem areas require blasting (highly regulated in CA, and absurdly controlled!) and these areas are also often very remote and rugged. To avoid causing fires during the work, there is also a lot of secondary work that needs to happen, and additional ‘fire watch’ labor.
So very expensive, time consuming, easy to generate massive amounts of red tape to bog things down, and hard for people to watch them and complain.
I've seen them doing the work to bury the power lines in Northern California near Lassen. It's true that it's labor intensive. It's also true that you can't really trust PG&E, they have a monopoly position over most of the market.
From what I observed, it looked like they have only one or two crews doing all this work. Given the scope of rate increases, the output rate seems low.
I think GP was referring to an inspection of that line / tower which noted the degraded condition of the ~century-old fasteners and recommended replacement. A decade+ passed without that work being done, and then the hook failed.
The liability for that is, of course, being paid for through our higher rates.
i just don't believe it. i think PG&E is using the idea of burying power lines to justify rate increases for capital expenditures, and hopes to never complete (or maybe initiate) these projects, all the while avoiding immediate active responsibility for currently-neglected infrastructure (sorry about that latest wildfire, we are planning to fix this issue by burying all the power lines by 2375!).
would love to be proven wrong here...