Oh my gosh, please don't let every major city in the industrialized world find this out! They'll be clearing the world's forests for poles and digging billions of holes in the sidewalks. I grew up in New York-I'm 72-and the only overhead power lines we had when I was a tot were for the trollies. There are Con Edison manhole covers almost 100 years old in New York. The first power distribution pole I ever saw was in Hicksville. I was there to observe nature and barefoot people. It was a school trip or something. Oh please don't stop telling me fairy tales from the CFOs of Utility companies. They're so fun.Oh, oh got to go. I think I hear Nikola Tesla spinning in his grave.

Conversion of Overhead to Underground It seems that after every major storm (hurricanes in particular), we see interest in converting overhead systems to underground. Here are a number of points made by utilities when confronted by the daunting costs associated with this endeavor: • Cost of putting distribution underground would be between $.5 million and $5.4 million per mile. Average underground about $1 million per mile. Average overhead about $120,000. • Cost of putting transmission underground would be about $10 million per mile • Service continuity could actually diminish • Virtually all jurisdictions conclude that conversion is prohibitive • Primary driver is aesthetics, not reliability • Repair time for underground is about 60% longer than overhead • Underground is still vulnerable to lightning • Underground lines are more susceptible to rodents, corrosion, tree roots and accidental digging • Outages per year would drop by 70% • System longevity for overhead is 50 years but only 30 for underground • Maintenance costs are about the same. • 70% of US system is overhead • Underground conversion cost per residential customer is approximately $20K

Don't be mis-led by Fig. 10 on page 21 of Vol I. These fault current magnitude comparisons are only true if impedances are disregarded, which is never done when calculating fault currents.

An example is Fig. 10(c) which shows a phase to ground fault current to be the same magnitude as Fig. 10(a), a 3 phase fault. This is only true if the impedance of the primary side is zero.

In the case of a "bolted" phase to ground fault at the secondary of the transformer, the single phase fault will always be greater than a three phase bolted fault at the same point.

It works like this: I 3phase = E/Z1 [ E is phase to neutral; Z1 is positive sequence impedance to the fault]; I phase to gnd = 3 x E/(2Z1 + Zt) where Zt is the transfomer impedance.

If Z1 = Zt then..... I phase to gnd = E/Z1 = I 3phase, but this is never the case.

Z1 is the sum of the primary side impedance (all the way to the generator) plus Zt, so Z1 is always greater than Zt. So, I 3phase would be less than the ground fault.

If you are putting this out there for humor you should say so. By the time I was done with the first section I was ready to delete the whole thing. Here is another example of someone that refuses to use the most basic intelligence of how electricity works. Then, writes about it like an expert. Obviously you have never dealt with the effects of the current flowing through the ground on a power system designed to do so, yet you spout off in sarcasms. Help a farmer who is loosing one to ten animals a day at a cost to him of $8000 per animal. Tell him that is “smac” count is caused by poor food, vitamins, water quality or his milking machine. Tell him “To save your business tare the floors out of you barns and replace them with $160000 worth of equal potential ground planes” only to find the problem worsens. Write jokes for him when the foreclosure sign goes up in his yard. Take a walk with a sheep farmer and have him show you the trail of death sites where his animals came to close to the underground gas line that is collecting stray current and helping it to the next path of least resistance to the source. Have you ever helped celebrate Christmas in July with a family that can light a strand of Christmas tree lights between the gas line in front of their property and their water system? Talk smart to family who saved for 10 years to build a swimming pool in their yard to the spec’s and codes and now can’t use it. Maybe there is a joke with a punch line like “look how much better your son is doing now, and it is only been 6 years” The only difference between you and a trained parrot is that after you write you don’t say "Polly wants a cracker" Here are some basics 1. Electricity needs a complete path 2. Tying the neutral to ground creates multiple paths 3. Current is divided between these paths by the resistance of the path 4. Current flows in the path or paths of least resistance 5. The path of least resistance may not be a straight line 6. Current flowing through resistance creates voltage (in opposition)(thus the phrase stray voltage) 7. Any thing that offers this current a path with out the opposition becomes the new path. Electricity is a wonderful and terrible thing. It can not be allowed to roam as it wills. It needs to be controlled. The neutral systems should be designed and replaced until everyone in the country is large enough to carry the highest possible unbalanced load of system creating it. Is not a matter of cost, it’s a matter of profits.