370 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



Since you cannot readily dissipate the heat, the heat tends to 

 build up to a point of destroying the electrical insulation. I am 

 talking now about present technology, and not about the advanced 

 systems that Mr. Wilcox described here. The ordinary insulation 

 presently used is simply oil-impregnated paper and the cable is im- 

 mersed in an oil bath held in a conduit. 



Now, in order to move the current along, so much heat is gener- 

 ated, and the heat increases on a geometric basis with distance and 

 volume of current, so that for a 25- or 30-mile stretch, you would get 

 so much heat built up for nonuseful purposes that no useful power 

 could be transferred. 



This means that, as a practical matter, in present technology a 

 long underground line is just not a very useful line to take care of the 

 great responsibility of the industry to move large blocks of power for 

 long distances. 



There is no fixed ratio of costs underground as compared with 

 overhead construction. In the present technology, the ratio would 

 vary from a minimum of several to 1 to 20 or even 50 to 1, depending 

 on the length of the line, its capacity, and other factors. A broad 

 program of substitution would require drastic upward revision in 

 power costs, on a major scale, perhaps on the order of half as much 

 again as we are paying. And I think we are presented with the 

 question, is it worth it on any broad scale? 



In practice, if undergrounding were required for all new high- 

 voltage construction, the Nation would be compelled to revert to 

 isolated generating plants within or close to metropolitan areas, in 

 order to minimize the transmission investment. This would entail 

 great sacrifices of economy in power transmission operation as well 

 as accentuate the air pollution problems that confront our metro- 

 politan areas today. In my judgment, this would not be progress, 

 but retrogression. 



Now, Mr. Wilcox has described to you many promising possibili- 

 ties through radical improvements in technology. There is much 

 the industry could do, both to improve the existing technology and 

 to develop these breakthroughs, and I think they will come. I think 

 undoubtedly in another generation, perhaps much less, we will get 

 the kind of ratio of costs in transmitting large blocks of power for 

 long distances that has now been achieved by the industry in dis- 

 tribution. This is what we should press for, to advance the tech- 

 nology as fast as it can possibly be done, so that we can bring closer 



