alt Hacker NewsPlease could you explain this? Does burying them effect performance or it’s just the added cost of a mega trench?
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petre • last Saturday at 8:45 PM
Read on insulators and AC insulator losses, insulator aging, cost vs. air. Or ask your favourite LLM.
A few bird shaped pylons near busy roads is probably nothing compared to miles of HVAC or HVDC cable and normalized insulation losses spread over its lifetime.
Also the branches in the sculptures are used to break lightning into smaller electric arcs just like in regular pylons. Pretty cool. Very Victorian.
Lines in the air don’t need any additional insulation. Cables underground need to be insulated. Now imagine how much insulation you need from 400kv, multiplied by hundreds of miles of cable and imagine how expensive that is. Now consider what happens if there’s a fault.