It’s not lifetimes of money, but there are substantial costs.
All of the existing distribution conductors need to be buried either by trenching or directional boring, all of the pole-mounted transformers need to be replaced with pad-mounted transformers , and all of the customer service drops need to be converted from overhead to underground.
In another post, someone said about $2.5M per square mile, which isn’t actually all that much money. If you figure half labor and half material costs (fairly standard for electrical construction) and labor costs of $100/hr (IBEW 66 journeyman lineman), that’s 12,500 hours of labor, or a 6.25 person crew for one year to convert one square mile, and Houston is 637 square miles.
~4,000 person years of labor, 400 full time linemen could do the whole city in 10 years.
All of the existing distribution conductors need to be buried either by trenching or directional boring, all of the pole-mounted transformers need to be replaced with pad-mounted transformers , and all of the customer service drops need to be converted from overhead to underground.
In another post, someone said about $2.5M per square mile, which isn’t actually all that much money. If you figure half labor and half material costs (fairly standard for electrical construction) and labor costs of $100/hr (IBEW 66 journeyman lineman), that’s 12,500 hours of labor, or a 6.25 person crew for one year to convert one square mile, and Houston is 637 square miles.
~4,000 person years of labor, 400 full time linemen could do the whole city in 10 years.