Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

Re:Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliabl... by mschuster91 on Monday April 03, 2023 @08:01AM (#35422039)

> Solar+battery tech has made power lines not only unnecessary, but in some states arguably not worth the fire risk anymore.

Power lines aren't an inherent fire risk. Unmaintained power lines, however, are.

Primarily, you need to maintain clearance from bushes and trees.

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Re:Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliabl... by msh on Monday April 03, 2023 @09:28AM (#35423172)

Or bury the cables.

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Re:Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliabl... by mschuster91 on Monday April 03, 2023 @10:28AM (#35424148)

Burying high voltage transmission cables is extremely expensive [1] and usually only done when there is no other choice (such as being in an urban environment, near airports and the likes) as the loss due to capacitance is far greater than on poles.

The exception to the "usually only" is, once again, our beloved "german redneck" government in Bavaria who insisted that the new North-South line Südlink got buried on Bavarian soil to quash local NIMBY resistance [2] - at the price of taking ages longer to build and costing ~8x the amount of pole-run lines.

[1] see page 64, https://www.amprion.net/Dokumente/Dialog/Downloads/Studien/E...

[2] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/energiewende-warum-erdkab...

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Re:Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliabl... by msh on Tuesday April 04, 2023 @02:49AM (#35435993)

I think the comment I replied to was referring to normal powerlines for households. Individual solar+batteries is not going to replace high voltage lines.

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Re:Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliabl... by pengaru on Monday April 03, 2023 @01:41PM (#35428083)

"This shirt is dry-clean only, which means it's dirty" - Mitch Hedberg

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