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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: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:26AM
I fully agree- it's a problem of short-term MBA thinking (don't bury), versus long-term (bury them). And the better job they do initially, the longer it will last trouble-free.
Everyone is talking about $. Our obsession with $ makes us look bad to the rest of the world. Can you put some kind of value on how unpleasant life can be during, and as a result of many days or weeks without electricity? For example, I have a water well- no electricity, no water! Electricity runs furnace too. And there's all that spoiled food...
Your power company MBAs and execs. likely have generators, which really aren't terribly expensive considering the benefit... (shuffles off to check local cl for generators...)