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posted by martyb on Thursday September 14 2017, @12:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the better-ask-Betteridge dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday September 14 2017, @01:34PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Thursday September 14 2017, @01:34PM (#567777) Journal

    Some management type decided it was cheaper for them to just let my electricity get knocked out than to do proper maintenance, the same maintenance that had been done since the lines were installed in the 1930s and 1940s.

    I think it's going to get worse with all the new plastic hardware being used on the lines now. Plastic coated fiberglass or glass reinforced plastic is all the rage but will not outlast the metal and porcelain/glass insulators of last century. In my neighborhood in south queens, the old hardware still standing is 90-100 years old. Sure the poles are heavily weathered, arms thin and populated with rotted wooden pins from previous repairs. But they are still delivering electric. Only one short power outage this year and the last was sandy. Before that, the great northeast blackout of 2003. Not bad for nearly 100 year old hardware. All the newer poles going up are taller and use plastic insulators. I'm sure the bean counters love the low cost. Doesn't matter to them because by the time the hardware falls apart and the utility is swamped with repairs, they'll be retiring to another part of the country they didn't fuck up.

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