On 27/02/2014 15:33, Michael Chare wrote:
....
Since the '87 storm my supply was failed three times because of falling
trees hitting overhead lines. The last time was this month. We were cut
off for 48 hours. Nothing was done to correct the problem for the first
30 hours, probably because other problems were being attended to. There
would have been a 4th time just before last Christmas, fortunately the
tree just clipped the line as it fell and only cause a temporary outage.

That is an average of around once every nine years. IMO a very good record.

If the electricity supplier cut down all the trees that could hit the
lines if they fell,

How much extra would you be willing to pay for your electricity to
achieve that level of maintenance?

or put the cables underground the problem would be
avoided....

.... but undergrounding has problems of its own.

Colin Bignell