They aren't cheap. I have a 15KW Generac Standby Gen and they are about $4K minus the electrician to wire it. We got ours after a couple bad storms (Irene and Sandy) hit us up here and left us without power for several days. Two years ago when the tornado hit us, it took down 11 trees on our property, took out 2 utility poles on our pvt road and left us without power for a week. We live in a Pine/Hemlock forest and trees come down and take out our power lines all too often and then there are the ice storms . We are the only ones in our neighborhood to have a standby generator and we had neighbors coming over for showers, drinking water (we are all on wells) etc. IMO, the peace of mind and feeling of independence is worth it. Sitting in a hot or cold house and losing everything in your freezer is no fun.
They ever hear of buried power lines?
That's easy to do if the development is in an former pasture or if the land has been cleared by a developer. In the forest where I live, to bury the lines one would have to cut thru so many roots and go around so many trees, it's dang near impossible. There's no way the power company will do that for us and we would never get the 7 homeowners who live off our road to agree to pay the cost to have it done. All the lines along the town/county roads are on utility poles too and those lines go down as much as the ones in our little grove neighborhood.
Couldnt they trench along the road?
You'd have to see our pvt gravel road to really understand. We have some very large trees and utility poles right on the very edge of our one lane road. When the tornado hit, it uprooted one large tree that took 1/3 of the road with it. After cutting up all the trees across our road the next order of business was to fill in the 3 foot deep 5" wide hole that uprooted root ball left behind. Beside, it would be way too expensive for us to do (the power company won't pay for it). Heck, it hard to get the power company to come and trim the branches that are rubbing on the wires. Earlier in the year we had a electric line rub against a tree branch and it got the tree smoking/smoldering. We called the power company and they told us to call back if we lost power, which eventually happened. Only then did they come and trim that branch.
