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It is the height of a highly destructive hurricane season in the United States. The devastation of Harvey in Texas and Louisiana caused nearly 300,000 customers to lose electricity service, and Hurricane Irma has cut service to millions of people. Soon, winter storms will bring wind and snow to much of the country.
Anxious people everywhere worry about the impact these storms might have on their safety, comfort and convenience. Will they disrupt my commute to work? My children's ride to school? My electricity service?
When it comes to electricity, people turn their attention to the power lines overhead and wonder if their electricity service might be more secure if those lines were buried underground. But having studied this question for utilities and regulators, I can say the answer is not that straightforward. Burying power lines, also called undergrounding, is expensive, requires the involvement of many stakeholders and might not solve the problem at all.
Would burying power lines render them more weather-proof?
Read the full article on The Conversation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @01:17AM (8 children)
In Kanata, Ontario, almost all of the local power distribution lines are fully buried (between buildings and the substations). There are very few utility poles and the only power lines you see are the big long-haul ones.
15-20 years ago power outages in Kanata were a fact of life, at least once a week. No idea if that had anything to do with the lines being buried. Not anymore though, these days the electricity service is very reliable. So it's certainly possible to make buried lines work.
We are too far inland for crazy hurricane winds. That would probably take out the main distribution lines, but that's probably somewhat less to work to repair than if thousands of utility poles are knocked out.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Skwearl on Thursday September 14 2017, @01:48AM (7 children)
Hurricane winds will not knock down those main distribution lines. I live in Northern BC, under the trade winds. 100 km/h winds are a monthly occurence. We have main lines running down from our dams, and windmills to service vancouver, washington state, and california. If those bad boys went down, it would be front page news.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday September 14 2017, @02:30AM
The dependence of the wind damage to wind speed is supralinear - if only considering a simplified model with "damage is proportional with the kinetic energy transferred", you'd get something that goes with the square of the speed. This simplified model may apply for "laminar flow" which is as close as possible to "sturdy buildings in constant (trade) winds".
Unfortunately, the relation damage/speed goes even further than supra-quadratic for stormy weather; even when considered only local effects, gust of winds, induced vibration, turbulence/vortices etc. will increase the damage with more than the square of the wind speed.
When considering "damage integrated over space/time" the things goes even more complicated - e.g. debris from one place carried by wind into another will produce secondary damages [accuweather.com], if the wind is strong enough you can even see a cascade breakdown effect (if a "clean tornado" is scary, imagine a tornado whirling all the debris).
Here's an Fine study fitting the hurricane loss (L) over maximum speed (Vmax) and size of the storm(R) [iop.org]: it goes with L = 10c VmaxaRb, with "with c determining an overall scaling factor and the exponents a and b generally ranging between 4–12 and 2–4 respectively. ".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 14 2017, @02:31AM (3 children)
I want to point out that expected 100 kph winds can be engineered for. 100 kph is only about 70 mph, and I think it safe to say that all of our power mains will survive that. Hurricane winds though, are often twice that strong, possibly even three times - and they aren't exactly routine, and expected. You're probably comparing apples to apples, but you've chosen entirely different varieties.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 14 2017, @02:36AM (1 child)
Fuji vs. rotten fermented Granny Smith with worms inside?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 14 2017, @02:45AM
No, it's not that bad, really. The power lines mentioned have been engineered for some powerful winds, and that same engineering would be applicable to "hurricane proof" power lines. It's a matter of degree. Of course, I'm not sure that we can build to that level of strength and durability. A cat five hurricane is probably going to take out some main power lines, even if we try to build to that level.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday September 14 2017, @03:36AM
Agreed- wind on wires, poles, towers, etc., is pretty easily handled. It's all the blowing debris, including leaf-bearing trees and limbs catching on wires and poles, that greatly multiplies the force.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday September 14 2017, @02:35AM
Here's an interstate power line in South Australia after an encounter with a twin tornado overimposed on winds with gusts between 90-120kmh [abc.net.au].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by driven on Thursday September 14 2017, @02:43AM
Always bothered me how the power lines in B.C. obscured the beautiful mountain views. They should bury more of the lines.