I live on the side of the street with powerlines and I took into consideration the eventual size of the tree when planting near powerlines so the tree wouldn't lose it's beauty from being trimmed in the future. I agree that is a good idea but it wasn't my point, I was just trying to point out that buried powerlines would prevent these issues. Also in my neighborhood the trees that are near the powerlines were not planted by the home owner's. They were existing as these homes were sold at a premium in the 80's as Tree'd Lots which is unheard of now because the contractor's make so much money off the lumber. As much as it may be my inherited problem I do not have thousands of dollars to pay for tree trimming. If anything I would remove the pesky pines which are notorious for breaking in storms and plant some Sugar Maples.
When we lost power here for a week trimmed branches would not have helped a whole lot, the trees all still had leave son them which made trees that normally would have been fine break. Many of them far away from the power lines and homes. They still ended up on top of roofs and across roads. We literally would of had to not had any trees in our yards for it not to happen.
