LARAMIE -- Some at last week's Wyoming Wind Symposium proffered what seemed to be a good idea: bury the hundreds of miles of transmission lines needed to send wind-generated electricity to market.

But underground transmission has two basic problems:

-- It's very expensive.

-- It apparently won't work.

Underground lines would mean few, if any, overhead towers and lines; they could take a straighter route; they could avoid multiple permitting issues, and the landscape would look better according to those who favored the idea.

Retired University of Wyoming professor Jay Lillegraven cited Gov. Dave Freudenthal's opening remarks at the symposium about what people will think 30 and 40 years from now -- why developers in the next few years didn't bury transmission lines.

"We could make straight lines and not gerrymander with 'not in my back yard,'" said Lillegraven, a paleobiologist and structural geologist.

Taking a long-term, and admittedly costlier, perspective would result in a happier state and prettier country side, he said.

Larry Cundall, chairman of the Glendo Wind Energy Association, said he'd prefer underground transmission lines on his ranch.

Overhead transmission towers and lines already cross his ranch, but he's grown accustomed to them, Cundall said. "After a while, you don't see them."

However, underground transmission lines would cost up to six times more than overhead lines, said Laura Ladd, energy economics advisor to Gov. Dave Freudenthal.

Angus Coyle, senior business developer for BP, said underground transmission would double the cost of delivering electricity to market.

"Transportation costs would be as much as generation costs," he said.

None of which matters, a transmission expert said.

With an underground transmission line, the current is very close to the ground unlike overhead transmission lines, said Sadrul Ula, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and director of the UW Utility Consortium.

No matter how much insulation encases the lines, the electric power will leak into the earth over the distance of the transmission, he said.

Underground transmission works only in short distances, such as in urban areas, Ula said.

If environmentally conscious Boulder, Colo., and scenic Yellowstone National Park could bury the electrical transmission lines, they would have done it years ago, he said.

But the technology does not exist that would make that possible, so overhead transmission is still used to the point it is practical to bury the lines for short distances, Ula said.

"Underground is only possible with high-power DC (direct current)," Ula said. "Underground is only possible with low distances.