On Monday, August 3, 2015 at 7:25:29 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Mon, 3 Aug 2015 13:53:15 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

I have applied to my County planning to replace my old home.
I contacted the power company to see how much installing some
new high voltage line and transformer to the new house would be,
they said $15,000 for 500 feet. That to much money for me.
I'm hoping to install a 400 amp panel at the old house and send
power to the new house some 500 away. Does anyone have experience
with this. ? Maybe transformer with smaller wire? I'm just trying
to save myself $10k

If the house is that far away, I assume you are on a rural property.
Generally, farms and rural places have a METER POLE. Meaning the meter
is on the pole with the transformer, or a nearby pole. On that pole
there is a main disconnect. Then wires run underground or overhead to
each building. All wires AFTER the meter are owned and installed by the
owner (or his electrician).

This is what you need to do. An electrician will not likely cost that
much. You DO NOT likely need a new transformer.

So, put the meter on the pole and a main disconect box, and go from
there.
Why do you need 400A anyhow?
I live on a working farm, I have 3 panels. My house (100A), my garage
(100A), and my barn (100A).

I could easily get by on a 60A in the house, and the barn only has a few
lights and in winter some livestock tank heaters, so actually a 30A main
would be enough. The garage probably needs 100A, but only because I have
a large welder in there which I use a couple times a year.
But codes require a 100A panel and If I was to build today, I think the
house would need a 200A main. But codes dont determine actual usage.

Either way, that is an outrageous price amount for 500ft of wire.

Several years ago, I got a trailer house for guests, and wanted the
phone company to run a line to it. (around 150 ft.). They wanted
hundreds of dollars, plus they said that their phone line can only
connect to ONE building, and I'd need to pay for another phone service.
I explained this was not a separate residence, but they said it did not
matter.
I got some underground wire CAT5, made for this use. Cost me around $50.
I put it in the same trench as the water line, and now have phones in
BOTH locations on the same line for the cost of $50.

You can run Ethernet and a POTS line in the same cat5 cable if you ever want to extend your network to the trailer. Use 568B connections on network jacks on either end but pull out the brown pair for your POTS line in a phone jack. I did it a lot for commercial customers and it works very well. Strip about 4" of the jacket off the cable but keep the piece of jacket intact so you can slide it over the brown pair to run to a surface mount phone jack from the surface mount network jack. 4" should be enough length to allow the jacks to be mounted side by side. You don't have to use the jacket off the cat5 cable or even a piece of jacket off a regular 2 pair phone cable but it makes for a neater installation and protects the POTS line pair. On the 568B wiring, the orange and green pairs carry the Ethernet signal and the blue and brown pairs are not used unless it's a POE, Power Over Ethernet system. There is a chance that ringer voltage on the POTS line could cause interference on the Ethernet but I've never had a problem with it. You could always use the other pairs for an intercom. Anyway, experiment and you can learn something new. ( ͡ᵔ ͜ʖ ͡ᵔ )

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[8~{} Uncle Net Monster