Question: Hurricane/Tornado & power supply

[CornField]

After each of these storms, the number of people without power is touted -- 6 million in Florida right after the hurricane and companion tornadoes.

Would it be of benefit for power lines to be underground? And, if it would be of benefit, why don't municipalities require it?

[niallmac]

1. Cost.

High water table regions make trench digging problematic.
Salt water flooding would corrode miles of vulnerable lines e.g. New Orleans.
Lots of power lines are underground where practical and affordable.
Lots aren't.

[CornField]

2. Thank you - I figured it boiled down to cost.

I don't see how, however, in light of the hurricanes and mass outages, it can be more cost effective to continue to repair above-ground lines in lieu of placing them underground, even if that required special coating.

???

[TheWraith]

3. They prefer a lot of long term cost over a little short term cost.

It's more complicated then that, but basically they'd rather take the expense of rebuilding the lines every time a hurricane hits over hurting this quarter's bottom line to fix the problem. Besides which, they probably get FEMA money to rebuild the lines, so it's better for them to leave the flawed system in place.

[Billy Ruffian]

4. Physical limits, too

We get ice storms here regularly, and the occasionaly hurricane, and we lose for extended periods of time, too.

Lots of power lines *are* underground, but I think it's limited to neighborhood level. The high tension lines would lose too much voltage if they were run underground.

There are many neighborhoods in FL that have underground utilities, so I'm not certain that it's the water table as an issue for all of the cables.

Florida Power & Light, in a recent update, was saying that their substations are still not working (270 or so were knocked out, they've repaired a bunch, and have reduced that number down to about 85 substations that don't function. They've got to get the substations running. They expect to have all but one hospital on line by tonight.

Getting the grid up and running isn't just flipping a switch. High voltage is tough engineering, and dangerous work.

It's darn expensive to re-fit powerlines underground. Based on the cost I incurred to put in a new yard service line (water from street to house) I'd guess the cost to the power company is on the order of $500 per house, just for the line from the street to the house. I can't even guess how much the neighborhood service lines cost.

It's only been two days now. Many folks that have no water or food brought their troubles on themselves. They had LOTS of warning. We keep six gallons of water minimum on hand (plus a case or two of bottled water) I've got collapsible containers that will hold 30 gallons of water. We've got 15 days of food. It takes up just the bottom shelf of a small pantry closet. It's not hard to take these kind of preparations. Take a look at what you have, and where you live. Evaluate the risks, and prepare appropriately. (In most cases, I'm staying put. If my house floods, we'll be needing an ark. Other folks should simply evacuate... and be prepared to do that)