I just heard of a fellow that lives in a cabin with no running water and no electricity. I don't have many details at the moment but I am told that the reason he has no power is because it would cost 10k US to have the power company supply it.
How does the last mile work? I was told that although the power company would never recover their cost to supply the last mile houses that the government has required the power companies to supply them anyway.
I seem to remember that the phone might also be included in these regulations.
It all depends on the particular utilities' line extension policies. These are filed with the appropriate governing utilities regulator in their territory. Different utilities charge different rates to extend their lines and have different methods of calculating credits for these charges based on anticipated revenue from the customers served.
Government regulations (which vary from place to place) usually only require that these policies be applied uniformly throughout a utilities service area.
One of my grandfathers went through this about 1970, when he was renovating an old farmhouse in Maine. I don't know what he paid to have electric and telephone extended over a mile, but Bangor Hydroelectric did pay some of it back as the few houses along the route had electric service installed. It was into the 1980's when the new owner of the log cabin across the road wanted more than gas lights and a pitcher pump and all of the existing homes were finally wired. Conversely, the rural delivery mail route was not extended to the house because the distance was over a mile. It was several years before one of the houses in the middle had a mailbox and the Post Office could make two extensions of less than a mile.
Also around 1975 or '76, we had neighbors who were looking at a US$4000 bill to run power to their new house. Their solution was to go off-grid, wiring the house but running on 12 volts dc from batteries, with propane stove and refrigerator and wood heat. The batteries were the big ones used in heavy equipment, and one was charged every day during the 60 mile round-trip drive to work. Sometime later they added a small windmill.
Finally, there are state roads in the Adirondack mountains where the phone lines run much further from the villages than the power lines. It's only in the last decade that the single wires and glass insulators on short poles were replaced with modern cables.
On Wed, 03 Aug 2005 06:40:17 GMT, "Mike Lamond" Gave us:
Wow. It was nice of them to give some of it back. 4k back then was a lot. It would sound quite reasonable these days, but I'm sure the number is quite higher for a similar run these days.
Re: Last mile electricity Group: alt.engineering.electrical Date: Wed, Aug 3, 2005, 8:01am (EDT+4) From: snipped-for-privacy@weedizgood.org (TokaMundo) On Wed, 03 Aug 2005 06:40:17 GMT, "Mike Lamond" Gave us: "Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@Hovnanian.com... Kilowatt wrote: I just heard of a fellow that lives in a cabin with no running water and no electricity. I don't have many details at the moment but I am told that the reason he has no power is because it would cost 10k US to have the power company supply it. How does the last mile work? I was told that although the power company would never recover their cost to supply the last mile houses that the government has required the power companies to supply them anyway. I seem to remember that the phone might also be included in these regulations. It all depends on the particular utilities' line extension policies. These are filed with the appropriate governing utilities regulator in their territory. Different utilities charge different rates to extend their lines and have different methods of calculating credits for these charges based on anticipated revenue from the customers served. Government regulations (which vary from place to place) usually only require that these policies be applied uniformly throughout a utilities service area.
Of course, you meant the open, bare wires and glass insulators. The bare wires were run in pairs and if you drove along the line you could see the transposition scheme whereby every so often one pair was reversed. This reduced crosstalk and noise pickup from power lines.
They gave EXCELLANT service. "Modern" cables would not have near the performance for POTS and party line service but "modern" systems can use repeaters and concentrators and such.
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