It’s both. If you look at the power grid from a high level, power lines are just the edges of the power grid, connecting producer and consumer nodes. We have an unreliable power grid because we have so many lines going all through the hinterlands, and so little redundancy. But you can’t have redundancy without density.

IMO this 20th century model is fundamentally unsustainable without massive government subsidies. It’s not Eversource’s fault. They’re never going to be able to trim enough trees on such sprawling infrastructure.

If you want grid electricity, live in town. If you want to live on an acre plot, get solar panels. If your home can’t support sewer lines, it probably shouldn’t support electrical lines either. On that note, we really need to bury more of the transmission lines connecting towns and cities, too.

It’s going to be a tough couple of decades as entitled exurban Americans slowly begin to realize that their lifestyle depends on massive government handouts and is completely unsustainable long term. A lot of them will attribute it to “live in pod eat bugs” conspiracy nonsense, but it’s just a regression to historical norms.

We only built houses in this soulless sprawl for one human worth of time. We lived in towns and villages for thousands of years, and in tribes before that. This current built environment is anti-human. We were never meant to live like this. Car addiction has been more devastating to communities than drug addiction.