There is no utility on Earth that has its rural distribution lines underground for one simple reason: cost. Undergrounding overhead lines would cost many multiples of the overhead cost and this would have to be passed on to the consumer. Our electricity bills are high enough as they are – no one wants to see them tripled, quadrupled or whatever. If it were a realistic option you’d think a place like Florida which suffers multiple major outages every year because of hurricanes would have done it years ago, but no: they have overhead lines as well. Nor would it necessarily result in the elimination of faults – they would still occur due to flooding, cable failures, dig-ins and the like. And it would take longer to repair or replace them. There would also be huge delays in connecting new properties to the network caused by the time involved in digging the trenches, getting permission from landowners and so forth. Nor of course would it be remotely realistic to initiate a programme of replacing the existing network of overhead lines with underground ones. All in all, on the face of it, it sounds like a reasonable proposition but when you examine it deeper it becomes a pipe-dream.