I do consulting for utility companies. They all emphasize safety to the degree that companies employing tens of thousands of electric linesmen and gas servicemen cannot tolerate a single injury much less a death. That is noble, but the cost in training and regulation is incredible.

I did some analysis of gas service records from 100+ years ago and compared the same jobs done today and the jobs took fewer man hours 100 years ago. Think about that for a minute. An installation of 500 feet of gas main took fewer man hours than today. No backhoe. No dump trucks. Picks and shovels win. Now think about a journeyman electric linesman starts at near six figures in many areas, the training, the ever increasing costs of hardware and software and the staffs of experts to maintain it all to support the field crews, awesome benefits, govt regulation, etc, and you understand how power rates climb at ever faster rates.

And power companies typically cannot use system maintenance as an argument for a rate increase before the rate commission. Only the costs of new systems can be factored into a rate increase. So they are continually rolling out new software and hardware at orders of magnitude more than what the existing systems cost to maintain. I am finishing a three year, $300 m project next month.