Buried Power Lines

[mobyhead]

I found this article interesting.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/02/opinio...html?hpt=hp_t2

(CNN) -- Congratulations: If you're reading this, you have electricity. Unfortunately, more than 3 million Americans this weekend couldn't join you. The sweltering heat wave that roasted the eastern United States was accompanied by terrible storms that have knocked out power lines up and down the seaboard.

While you enjoy your air conditioning, you might want to take a minute to consider: Why do Americans tolerate such outages?

Outages are not inevitable. The German power grid has outages at an average rate of 21 minutes per year.

The winds may howl. The trees may fall. But in Germany, the lights stay on.

There's no Teutonic engineering magic to this impressive record. It's achieved by a very simple decision: Germany buries almost all of its low-voltage and medium-voltage power lines, the lines that serve individual homes and apartments. Americans could do the same. They have chosen not to.

[dchan]

I don't know about other cities, but I know that New York (Manhattan, at least) buried all of its power lines precisely for that reason. Fierce blizzards in the past knocked down above-ground power lines, so city officials decided to bury all of its power lines to prevent the loss of power to its businesses and residents during storms.

[Hayward]

The city I grew up in buried power lines. Their reason? Cities that kept them above ground looked "low class". I would personally have said gritty or rural, but I get the point. Whatever the cost, burying them in vaults or tubes underground looked better.

Outages still happened but they normally happened at substations, and the deployment of technicians to fix the problem quickly was guaranteed

[ardecila]

Wish we could do this in New Orleans... but the city's soil is like a sponge that's always soaked, and it tends to shift dramatically over time, cracking pipes and conduits and allowing groundwater in. Putting lines underground would make them more vulnerable to outages.

What I find more objectionable are the high-tension wires with 90-foot poles that run right down residential streets blocking the sidewalk. Certainly it's worth the outlandish cost to bury these monsters, even if it requires some creative engineering.

For the local neighborhood lines, it would be a huge aesthetic improvement to run them behind the buildings rather than in front. No less danger of outages, but you'd eliminate the messy appearance, especially in commercial districts where the rear side of buildings is already pretty unattractive.

[mello]

Gotta bury them. But hey states, cities, counties are broke and the Fed is 16 trillion in debt so... Once again we have the resources to do things but "money" always holds us back. Zeitgeist Movement!

[Stained]

I work in the power industry, and we would love nothing more than for all low-voltage lines to be buried. There do seem to be more cities and towns than ever that see the benefit to this. Personally, I think that this is a cause that will pick up more steam if these patterns of severe weather continue. The cost of having outages and paying to fix them will offset the cost of paying to bury the lines. It is something that will need to be funded by consumers, utilities, states, and the fed (maybe) to become feasible though.

[Roadcruiser1]

I don't know. Didn't Nikola Tesla at one point proposed to build something that would have allowed for the transmission of electricity without wires? Why can't we just do that instead?

[Stained]

If only.... Invent a feasible way to do that and you are set for life and can build all the supertalls you want.

[Londonee]

Couple things. I'd like to see the financials on up keeping above ground wires serviced over the life of the pole after installation. How often are techs or repairmen called out to fix a down wire or blown transformer over the life of a utility pole. These
Oles last what, 30, 40, 50 years. That could be a lot of maintenance calls...I'd bet the maintenance fees make that 10 times more expensive number far more palatable when viewed with perspective....but immediate bottom lines is all energy companies care about.

Secondly, property values... In Philly, neighborhoods with buried wires have dramatically higher property values...some, bordering neighborhoods, the jump could be 30percent, by simply crossing a street! Burying wires beautifies hoods which immediately would increase home owner equity, which is especially nice nowadays, also rising property values increase tax coffers, which hopefully leads to more services, etc.

Lastly, in the telecom, high speed era that we are in...the amount of cabling that these poles are handling is increasing at an alarming rate. Many of the posts in my hood on Philly look like victims of elephantiasis--thick, burly, heavy cords snaking aggressively. Bottom line...it's just nicer to have them buried...so on my strolls I can enjoy looking at the buildings, the trees and the sky without having to gaze through a woven nightmare of tangled, gangly, hideous wires.

[GWHH]

I have a lot of friends that work for the power company. One of the argements against putting the lines underground is that when you need to repalce the lines becaue of age it cost more.

But all my power company friends say they have never had to replace a aboveground line due to age. They either break from damage of sometype, or you have to put bigger lines in because that area needs more power.

I think the power company should put the 15% of the more urban and 15% of the most rural lines underground. That where the most problems happen. Just get them a whole bunch of tax breaks and than tell them to do it.

I live in PA and the gas compaines are spending SEVERAL BILLIONS dollors over the next few years replacing ALL the old residentals and commerical natural gas lines. They think it will take 20 years to get the job done.

So it can be done for the gas company. Why not for the power company? And the gas company product has been going down in price for the last 3 years and will countine to go down for the next 20 years due to all the shale nautral gas they have found out here in the last few years!

[jd3189]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Wish we could do this in New Orleans... but the city's soil is like a sponge that's always soaked, and it tends to shift dramatically over time, cracking pipes and conduits and allowing groundwater in. Putting lines underground would make them more vulnerable to outages.

I think the problem may exist in Miami's region as well. Where I live in West Palm Beach, there are streets that go on for miles with these poles,but they are easier to maintain.