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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: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 14 2017, @02:17AM (6 children)
I'm not sure that's accurate. It really depends on how they are buried, how difficult it is to repair after a catastrophe.
Yes, if they were to bury each individual power line in it's own trench, without any kind of conduit, repairs would take forever plus a couple years. On the other hand, covered concrete trenches would be pretty damned expensive to build, but repairs would be relatively quick and easy after a flood. And, floods are almost the only thing that can damage underground lines. Earthquakes, but those aren't frequent, or especially catastrophic in most of the country.
So, you have a flood, the electric crews come out, inspect, and find that they need to replace half the lines. Splice your new line onto the damaged line that needs to be replaced, and pull. Unsplice, and tie the new line in at both ends. Finished. No need to set new poles, no need to gather that old line up, untangle it from trees, etc, etc.
And, underground lines will be totally immune from all the minor little nonsense that currently plagues us out in the rural areas. Routine thunderstorms will NOT knock trees into the lines. It would require some really freak auto accident to cause an outage, as opposed to any idiot can run into a power pole right now and knock service out.
How does the REST of the world do it? Studies are all fine and good - but what does the empirical data say? Does all of Europe run their lines overhead? All of Asia? Some cost analysis is in order. Just simple cost analysis of existing systems is all that is required. (Perhaps I shouldn't say "simple" in relation to cost analysis - I know freaking MANAGERS who don't have a clue where to start!!)
If we can't find examples to use for cost analysis, then we really ought to create a test zone. Pick a state, any state, maybe one of the little ones like Delaware. Put it all underground, and run it for five or ten years.
I'm convinced that despite the rather huge expense of putting it all underground, over time, it will be far more efficient.
As an added benefit, little kids, idiot adults, and livestock will almost never come into contact with a damaged power line. We read, now and then, about someone being killed when they touch a downed line. With everything underground, a person would have to open an access cover, and get down into the work area in order to touch a live line. But, even then, underground lines will be insulated, rather than suspended by insulators. Touched a line? You're probably not going to get fried.
Pick any major industrial park where the lines are buried. When was the last time they had to dig them up for repairs? I've never seen or heard of it happening.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:24AM
I agree on all points — and from what I've seen, almost every neighborhood built after 1970 in the SF Bay Area has underground lines, so I suppose we'd be a half-decent test. During the 70s & 80s we did lose power a few times each winter during really hard rain, but it declined rapidly after that point, so that since the mid-90s it has only happened maybe twice a decade, if even that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @11:14AM
Sinkholes
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/14/sinkhole-alley-florida-fact-of-life [theguardian.com]
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/why-are-there-so-many-sinkholes-in-florida/378869/ [theatlantic.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @12:19PM
Those must be extraordinarily incompetent managers. Every normal manager knows exactly where to start: Fire up your email and write to some subordinate that you need the result immediately.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday September 14 2017, @01:24PM (2 children)
In new york city, a few people and pets have been electrocuted from the grates and covers on underground electrical vaults during the winter months. The salt and melt water makes it's way into the vaults where it corrodes exposed metal such as the bonding jumpers and conduit bushings ruining the enclosures ground bond. Next thing you know the salt water is now conducting line current to the now poorly or completely ungrounded vault walls. Now you have a potentially fatal hazard lurking innocently on city streets. One of the more recent from memory was a woman tried to rescue her dog being shocked and was unfortunately electrocuted. Emergency responders measured 480V on that cover.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 14 2017, @02:50PM (1 child)
Ouch. You seem to be talking about basically a manhole cover in the sidewalk. The city hasn't modified the relevant codes, and required those vaults to be elevated, closed over, and sealed better? Whoever thought that what amounts to a manhole cover would keep water out?
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:54PM
Yes. BTW, this is in Manhattan where space is at a premium. Though they also exist in the outer boroughs, just less of a chance to come across 480V on a residential network. They are junction vaults where service entry cables tie to the utility distribution or connection between runs of feeders. I might have been mistaken in my original post and realized that the ducts and junction boxes are most likely all concrete. So no ground conductivity at all. They could build in sensors which have exposed corrosion proof electrodes to monitor for voltage leaks. But something like that requires money and maintenance that no one wants to spend. Here's a diagram, scroll down to the underground network image: https://www.coned.com/en/about-us/media-center/multimedia-library-or-gallery [coned.com] Some other interesting things in there too.
I've seen lots of above ground switchgear and enclosures around Long Island and California, specifically the Aliso Viejo area. Takes up some space but not really all that bad. They also have a lot of underground transformer vaults out in Aliso Viejo and the surrounding area.