These are all great and ty for writing it up! I just want to pile on about this point:
What’s stopping them now? There’s lots of copper in the street lamps and various equipment at a store. The answer is that the copper isn’t easy to access. It would take someone way too much time to get any substantial amount of copper from the wires so long as the run back is protected. They would need to rip apart each panel to get to it.
Nothing is stopping them now. Wire theft is a huge problem and mitigation of the risk is a constraint on any commercial electrical installation. It’s so pervasive that street lamps dont use copper wire anymore; they mostly use aluminum wires, so that people don’t have as much of a reason to lop them over and loot the wiring (they do one, discover it’s not copper and then skedaddle instead of doing the whole row). People absolutely can and do steal wiring, all the time (meth makes you so productive)
Restricted access is the only real way we have to deal with this (besides keeping lines energized - yes, horrifyingly that’s a very common technique). A couple cameras and a few hundred a month to a monitoring service to keep an eye out for anyone inside the fence is kinda the only option. l-ion angle grinders man, they’re a problem.
An aside: Carport solar exists, which is basically what people mean when discussing this topic. Unfortunately it’s more or less greenwashing. They do technically work but I haven’t seen one yet that wasn’t severely limited in functionality due to the site and stylistic requirements. They’re no “Solar Freakin Roadways” or anything, but they’re not nearly as useful as the marketing hype would have you believe. They’re large, extremely rigid structures that require drainage accommodation and are very prone to damage due to the nature of the location.
These are all great and ty for writing it up! I just want to pile on about this point:
Nothing is stopping them now. Wire theft is a huge problem and mitigation of the risk is a constraint on any commercial electrical installation. It’s so pervasive that street lamps dont use copper wire anymore; they mostly use aluminum wires, so that people don’t have as much of a reason to lop them over and loot the wiring (they do one, discover it’s not copper and then skedaddle instead of doing the whole row). People absolutely can and do steal wiring, all the time (meth makes you so productive)
Restricted access is the only real way we have to deal with this (besides keeping lines energized - yes, horrifyingly that’s a very common technique). A couple cameras and a few hundred a month to a monitoring service to keep an eye out for anyone inside the fence is kinda the only option. l-ion angle grinders man, they’re a problem.
An aside: Carport solar exists, which is basically what people mean when discussing this topic. Unfortunately it’s more or less greenwashing. They do technically work but I haven’t seen one yet that wasn’t severely limited in functionality due to the site and stylistic requirements. They’re no “Solar Freakin Roadways” or anything, but they’re not nearly as useful as the marketing hype would have you believe. They’re large, extremely rigid structures that require drainage accommodation and are very prone to damage due to the nature of the location.