1500 feet from the road

Bob

You can rent a trencher for about $150 a day-should be able to get that far in 1 day if not too many rocks & roots.

Big metal conduit sweeps on the ends were about $100, ea. Can't remember pipe cost but wasn't that bad-maybe $1-$2 a foot.

Power company would come pull 1st 200ft free-then $1 ft afterwards.

Either way I am sure even if you do trenching and pipe yourself you are looking at $3000-$4,000, am not surprised electrical Contractor wants big $. Copper very high, nothing wrong with aluminum to save some $ on main feed. 400amp power box and breakers costs a pretty penny too.

Have you thought driveway? I ended up spending more on gravel than the electrical service.

dr.sportster beat me to it, saying there was plenty wrong with aluminum. If cost makes it the only option, the owner ought to find out everything that can go wrong with it and engineer ease-of-repair features into the design to reduce the aggravation of future problems.

One of the buildings in a complex where I work suffered several breaks in one of the underground #2 aluminum main feeds between the transformer and one of the multiple meter base panels. Diagnosis, location, and a temporary workaround cost the best part of $1,000. Repair (essentially, doing it right this time) looks to set somebody back about $12,000. It wouldn't be so expensive if the wires had originally been run in conduit, or if a blacktopped parking lot hadn't been put over 3/4 of the 300' run.

My advice would be to use conduit and not blacktop over it afterwards. Copper would be great, but, after all, this is the real world.

All the best, Stan

I bought several primary power generators for remote ADOT sites where there are no power lines. We installed two generators at each site to power the shop/equipment sheds and 2 - 4 houses. They run one generator continuously for a week, then shut it done and run the other one for a week. If used continuously for primary power, there is quite a bit of maintenance to a generator unit - and it ain't cheap!