And then there is the matter of burying the lines to the each house, which is a personal expense, and also expensive.
Burying pre-existing lines is expensive, but doing it from the very beginning isn’t too bad.
All of the new developments here have the lines buried.
Yea, when you get to those voltages underground isn’t much worse than above ground. But like you say, the above-ground infrastructure is there in most of the country - so it will be very costly to move them underground.
It’s the old question:
Do you believe in higher taxes to help the homeless? Answer: Sure, we need to do what we can to pull them out of their situation.
Would you be willing to pay higher taxes to help the homeless? NO WAY!!! The government steals enough of my money already.
Sure, people want reliable power, as long as they don’t have to pay for it. What should be done is a serious cost-benefit study of options. Maybe doubling the size of the truck fleet and clearing trees more often and with wider berths would help a lot, and not cost too much. And then that fleet could also respond to outages much more effectively. That is one option.