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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: 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.