Installation Costs

Cables are more expensive than overhead lines, but given that cables are a developing technology, it is intuitive that costs to install cables will reduce faster than those for long-established overhead line technologies.

Cables also require less land than overhead lines, and as land becomes more valuable, the effect of value lost in providing portage for lines will have an increasingly beneficial effect on the overall cost of cable projects.

Europacable produced a position paper describing where and how much of a role cables should play in transmission projects. Europacable advocates that life cycle costs should be considered when analysing the relative costs of cable and overhead lines.

However, even when considering just the up front costs, there is considerable disagreement in the analysis available:

• A recent report by Eurelectric indicates cost ratios between cable and lines of 10-25 to 1
• “Undergrounding of Extra High Voltage Transmission Lines” (Jacobs Babtie for the Highland Council, Cairngorms National Park Authority & Scottish Natural Heritage, March 2005) indicates 6-7x

Learn more about relative cost figures and about relative costs when life cycle issues are included.