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After Recent US Storms, Why Are Millions Still Without Power?
Hugh Pickens points out a report from Jamie Smith Hopkins that "The unusual nature of the 'derecho' is complicating efforts to get everyone's much-needed air conditioning up and running again as more than 1.4 million people from Illinois to Virginia still remain without power and power companies warn some customers could be without power for the rest of the week in the worst hit areas. Utilities don't have enough staff to handle severe-storm outages – the expense would send rates soaring – so they rely on out-of-state utilities to send help, says Stephen Woerner, Baltimore Gas and Electric's (BGE) chief operating officer. Hurricane forecasts offer enough advanced warning for utilities to 'pre-mobilize' and get the out-of-state assistance in place but the forecast for Friday's walloping wind was merely scattered thunderstorms. 'No utility was prepared for what we saw in terms of having staff available that first day,' says Woerner. But is it a given that a strong storm would cause this magnitude of damage to the electricity grid? 'Even without pursuing the extremely expensive option of burying all of the region's electrical lines, the utilities can and do take steps between bouts of severe weather to prevent outages,' writes the Baltimore Sun, adding that consumer advocates are concerned that utilities invest sufficiently in preventive maintenance. 'Tree trimming and replacement of old infrastructure — particularly in areas that have been shown to be vulnerable to previous storms — helps prevent outages.'"
Goddamn, napping on a man lift next to a downed livewire?!?! Who DOES that?!?!?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Peophttp://news.slashdot.org/story/12/07/03/1330239/after-recent-us-storms-why-are-millions-still-without-power?utm_source=slashdot&utm_medium=facebook#le need to start becoming independent from utilities.
Drilling wells
Solar Powered roofs
Wind power
NEED I SAY MORE
And unwilling to dip into profits on a service that costs next to nothing to produce.
Hint: hanging wires on poles where they are subject to damage from wind and
falling trees might have something to do with it.
Add battery backups to all the substations. Then add battery backups to houses (either fly wheel or lead acid.) Then add electric car batteries back into the grid in an emergency. Then pony up to the bar and pay for wireless space based solar (one estimate is it would rasie the median income in the U.S. to ~130k.) Then add smart grid tech so you can relight the grid from varied sources.
It's because we never bother to maintain our infrastructure. We build bridges and let 'em fall down. We hang power lines off wooden poles, and never bother burying them. We sort of fix it when it breaks, but then it breaks again, but we don't really learn from it.
--Udo.
...We would be happy to sell you some electrons!
the US can't be bothered to bury their cables
Because of privatization of the industry. They're too worried about profit margins to keep the staff at levels that serve the public's needs.
Boston Gas & Electric is owned by Constellation Energy which is owned by Exelon Corporation.
Utility rate regulation is a system of assuring the investors of their return in return for doing something the public wants done. US Utility Rate Regulation used to be aimed at making sure that the maximum generation capacity was present with adequate return for lines and repairs etc. Under the George W Bush administration this regulation shifted towards "Pipeline" design for power sales. This stripped the local Coop or supply company of its revenue for service and maintainence. Further changes in regulation changed the position of the large generators so that they have little or no incentive to build new facilities. As such the USA is losing its grid to a very finely tuned profit machine that has no instinct for self preservation. Everything is now and nothing is tomorrow. The result is that the USA is fast sinking into a 3rd world power grid with massive failures and stunningly stupid management. The power rating system optimizes the push towards insufficient demand and planned brownouts. The 1930's regulation design caused the largest expansion and most robust utility system in the world. The 2000's are seeing this systematically dismantled in favor of "deregulation" which in this case is a farce because the regulation exists this is only a matter of how it is designed.
Would be happy to sell you some power if the grid was working!
I am not from USA but visited there recently for business.
I was really astonished by how it seems to be a third world country in terms of infrastructure. The power lines are not buried, they are just haphazardly strung up on big poles all over so they are acceptable to being knocked by winds or damaged by lighting. But it goes much further. There is no usable public transit system, and what there is smells of urine and feels highly dangerous. Even the internet is slow and expensive compared to modern countries. It felt like visiting a country stuck in the past and unwilling to join the present.
If millions are without power after a storm, it is because they did not join with modern nations in protecting their power infrastructure.
Here in Europe, the news reports a very simple reason: a totally dilapidated infrastructure. Most power wires still hanging off of poles, subject to lightning, wind and falling trees. Decades-old transformers and switching stations that fail catastrophically, and sometimes cause cascading failures.
I haven't lived on the East Coast for decades - any power engineers want to comment on the truth or falsity of these reports?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Half a dozen solar panels on the roof and a good inverter mounted will mean that you can power essentials (fridge, freezer, lights, etc) even when you're not on the grid.
Sure, it won't help if the storm cracks your panels or it stays really cloudy, but clouds often leave as quickly as they arrive and unless they're really thick, solar can work even when it is cloudy (just like you can get sun burnt when it is cloudy.)
Being green with respect to electricity has other advantages when it comes to your power supply aside from being green and seeing the monthly electricity bill drop.
In Florida since we get nasty storms all of the time the power companies have full time crews that trim trees near power lines. They are going to have to do it anyway when a storm comes and it's easier to do it when the weather is nice for 3/4 of the year than when the storms come in the heat and humidity of the summer. All you have to do is call them up to take a look at a tree near their lines and they will take a look and trim it if needed.
The rest of the country might not get this weather often enough to spend the time to maintain the trees so when a freak storm comes by you not only have had lots of tree growth but it's growth that hasn't been subjected to high winds.
http://www.fpl.com/residential/trees/index.shtml
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
As someone who was without power from Friday night to yesterday afternoon in Maryland (served by BG&E), I get that this was bad storm and outages are probably inevitable. My problem is: Why are there so many of these outages?
I moved to my current residence in 2006 and there have been at least 4 outages lasting longer than 24 hours. I think I'm missing one in that count, but I didn't want to put it down without remembering it better. But we've had one of these 24+ hour outages each of the last three years.
When I step outside during an outage, I'm greeted with the sound of generators all around me (including my own, but it's quiet enough that I hear several others over it). Why do we all have generators? Because we need them so frequently! I bet if I did a poll, half the neighbors would either have a generator or have power from someone that does. And a good portion of the rest probably have friends or family far enough that they might have power, but near enough to make staying at their place feasible.
Meanwhile...my water works fine. My natural gas service works fine - we were able to take hot showers throughout the outage. My FiOS worked fine after I hooked it to the generator. All of those things have one thing in common: the lines are buried. It's sad that my internet service is more reliable than my electricity. If it's so expensive to bury wires, how come Verizon just did it a couple years ago when they installed FiOS?
BG&E did a "reliability improvement plan" in our city a year or two ago, moving some main wires underground. It seems to have cut down on the shorter power outages, but no such luck for the longer outages. We're tired of it. My wife and I are going to write BG&E a nice letter that basically asks "WTF?" I plan to CC the city council and local papers as well.
problem solved.
Several hundred electrical workers from Ontario are also helping out.
when you add an extra leap second...
Something y'all should keep in mind (and into Day 5 without power) is that burying the lines isn't a silver bullet. There's lots of stuff that can go wrong with underground wires, and it doubles, triples, quadruples the time, effort, and expense to repair an underground fault. With the lines overhead, access to the grid is quick and cheap, and many times, the fault is visible.
When I first came to US, I was shocked to see those wood utility poles. It is so ancient. There are many excuses for keeping those. People need to go to some developing countries, particularly BRIC, to take a look at their infrastructures. Where is the $$ for change?
^(oo)^pig~
I sat in on a town hall meeting where JCP&L fumbled majorly in explaining themselves after taking a week or more to restore power in northern NJ. They gave all manner of excuses, and the meeting attendees pointed out endless examples of dead branches hanging over wires. Their policy? Then don't touch the branch unless the branch is *hanging* on the wire. How's that for foresight? The moment a strong wind kicks up, they lose power. They're so fucking cheap that they fired all their linemen, and now out-of-state emergency support has become the ONLY support.
Shame on them.
Vote for Romney and privatize even more infrastructure and eventually Apple/Google/etc can afford high tech uptime, and the rest of US infrastructure (certainly rural area, without COOPs) will have India-like outages . . . (quote me in 5 years, and you won't laugh about this one anymore)
Because people don't have a few solar panels on their roofs?
It would only take 4 solar panels to run the lights, TV and fridge in an energy efficient home. It won't run the AC though. The TV crews should find some people with solar panels on their home and show how they are surviving this week.
People used to live with no AC, but there wasn't a blanket of CO2 and loads of asphalt/concrete keeping the hot air close to the ground back then.
I went to Australia and there are lots of homes with a few solar panels on them down there. In Vegas, they are much more rare. In the Midwest, even more so. Make your own power people and you don't need to worry about the infrastructure and grid.
Nature happens. You guys are knee'jerk reacting. Next story.
I can't help but wonder why the grid is so crappy up there in the northeast. 80 mph winds... big whoop. We had that a few weeks ago down here (North Texas). Several trees down in my neighbourhood, many damaged roofs. But power never went out. Didn't even flicker. All power lines here are buried except high voltage. Why can we do it when the northeast can't?
My home state of CT had two storms that took out power to most of the state for over a week just last year. Get on our level.
On a serious note, it's kind of sad to see that even after our horrendous storms and massive consumer backlash against CL&P's near-monopoly, there are still power companies out there acting like it could never happen to them, not having a contingency plan for the worst case scenario.
>> After Recent US Storms, Why Are Millions Still Without Power?
In part it's because the idea of low skill laborers to supplement a highly trained core is something that unions generally oppose. (Normally, unions benefit from busy times by getting higher wages during overtime. Management would also be tempted to use a supplemental, lower-wage work pool more often than higher-paid workers earning overtime if giving the choice.)
However, even if local authorities and utilities could mobilize the great masses of unemployed in our ongoing recession, they would likely not want to for fear of liability claims from workers getting hurt cleaning debris, cutting tree limbs or the like. In other words, even though they may be paying a union member 2x his normal wage rate to clear trees, once you factor in legal expenses, it might still be cheaper than hiring someone desperate for a job at $8/hr.
For comparison, our computers have reset unexpectedly twice (iirc) in the past 12 years. I assume that both times it was due to a short power-blip. No other outages that I recall. I think occasionally about buying a UPS, but I'm not sure the UPS wouldn't actually decrease the reliability.
The difference is exactly what you expect: all power wires here are buried. Heck, our house was built in 1934, and the wires were buried. Why does the US still string them up on poles, almost a century later? Weird...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I lose electrical power at least once a year. Sometimes it's just a few blocks, sometimes it's a quarter of the city. It usually happens during thunder storms, but once in a while it happens for no apparent reason. It usually takes several hours for it to be restored. This is in a city of 200,000 in the Midwest. Several decades ago, this was acceptable; electricity was a convenience that gave us light and maybe ran some of our home appliances. But today it is essential to our daily lives; too many things now require electricity to work. And yet... we're still using the same basic infrastructure that my grandparents got their electricity from during the Great Depression.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
it's like the wal mart attitude of just buy the cheapest no matter what the hidden costs are of buying more products to make up for the crappy cheapest product in the first place
same here. dollar wise for the initial costs its cheaper to put up overhead wires. and the repair costs are probably low enough that digging holes is always too expensive.
and the fact that when you get to the republican areas everyone is always against higher taxes so they make due with crappy infrastructure
Remove regulatory barriers to small private, personal and community power generation systems and solve this problem!
It all starts at 0
Of course the utility companies can take steps between storms to upgrade outdated equipment and trim growth from around power lines.
The trouble is, we don't want to spend the considerable sums of public money it'd take to make that happen.
This should come as no surprise to anyone. Our utilities are a hybrid of private enterprise and public good. Since today there is no greater fundamental evil in the United States than the public sector and maintenance is a generally unprofitable annoyance for businesses, don't expect any more expenditure on energy infrastructure improvements than is absolutely necessary.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Removing moderation.
Fellowship 9/11
The US electric grid is a product of history much more than planning with bits tacked on or merged as short-term goals dictated without much in the way of long-term planning. (There are actually three main US grids, one for the East, one for the West and one for Texas). Maggie Koerth-Baker wrote an excellent book, "Beforee the Lights Go Out," which is about the grid and related issues that discusses this and how it creates a lot of these problems and what we can do about it. I highly recommend it.
We were without power for three days. What has struck me most is that the damage happened in 15 minutes while a hurricane blows for six or eight hours. Also, there was very little rain with this storm system. At the stables is was hard to water the horses with the well pump out. The stream was also dry. Lucky we'd filled all the buckets in the barn a week before.
Because the USA are just another third world country!
Why are Americans so obsessed with air conditioning? Massive power failure you'd think there'd be more important priorities. Anyway you have slave labour in the form of prison chain-gangs so get them to bury the power cables.
Seriously. Look at a map for any densely populated urban area, and consider the scale and complexity any utility provider must face. The problem is enormous and the adverse conditions affecting the utility are highly varied. Also consider that it makes no sense for these utility providers to retain standing armies of workers and equipment to react to rare events.
People need to grow up, and understand that sometimes they will be left without the conveniences of modern life. It is incumbent upon each of us to be prepared for these difficult times when we might have to go a full 48 hours without being able to watch The Bachelorette.
In most municipalities there 1 or 2 government granted monopolies who serve the area with power. There is no incentive for those companies to provide more reliable service because there is no competition.
notenough power? now they have a reason to build more nuclear reactors, like in japan!
Capitalism enforces ever rising levels of mediocrity. Like what's in Wal-Mart, every product or service is made to be *just* reliable enough to sell and beat the competition, if there is any. The power grid is *just* good enough so that no company will spend money to fix it. As for the actual physical grid itself, there's no significant competition.Thinking ahead to emergencies doesn't figure into this, and don't even start to discuss the national interest if it compromises profit somewhere. EMP anyone?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
we got moar bettar elextricitah than iraq do so let freedom ring dood
Because quick profits and millisecond gains are the king in US. The utilities are trying to save both on infrastructure and maintenance. Having the power lines been buried, like in pretty much every first world country, they would have had a lot less problems from a little wind. I am pretty sure that the next post would be how this is too expensive because of the 'low' population density and the 'rural' populations and I call this complete bollocks. The utility poles are as prevalent in urban areas as they are out in the country. So, you saved on infrastructure and this is probably OK, but then you need to maintain it. And this means keeping the trees away from the poles, not overloading the wooden poles to the point where a little wind will snap them and replacing them before they rot completely away. Now this makes the cheap infrastructure a lot more expensive, unless you skip on the maintenance, which is what most utilities cheerfully do. This is by no means the only utilities fault. Any investment cost will need to be passed to the consumers and they will have none of it.
It is a major expense to disaster proof all utilities, and doing so in a way that would prevent damage against 100-year high winds costs a ton. Would you pay double the taxes on electricity for 10 years to protect against something that statistically shouldn't happen again in your life time?
Combine that with insane amounts of damage. My electricity comes through underground wires in one direction, and that's why I still had power sunday. Sunday night, though, the wind took out more substations, and snaped a live line on the other side of the property. And with that, power was gone. It wasn't just the snapped line, but the trees that pulled up underground cables when they fell; it isn't just a single line broken, but 10s of breaks just to restore power to a few people. And the areas hit aren't all dense urban areas, but at least here it is lots of power lost in rural farms.
That's what it comes down to. DO it as cheaply as possible damn the consequences. After all the utilities don't have to pay the true cost of outages, the consumer does. This is called "externalized costs", a concept which makes even the most conservative Economist shudder because it means market forces break down.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
in southern New Jersey. Cell phone service seems back to normal as of late Monday. Power isn't expected to be back until the 6th, don't know about cable/internet. Thankfully I purchased a generator after Hurricane Irene last year - were without power/cable/internet for two days after that. Generator will cover a good bit of our needs, just need to make sure we don't overload it - as my wife did this morning. While I agree that the local utilities DON'T do enough preventative maintenance to trim back trees, etc., the amount of trees that look like they literally exploded is amazing. We were lucky and only had minor damage in our neighborhood, my parent's street looks like a war zone - but they live in a more developed town and have their utilities all restored.
1) Burying the residential electrical lines in the Northeast is a large infrastructure project that must be done. 2) Unemployment is high Seems like a good opportunity for the Government to put unemployed folks to work. Of course it will cost money. Pay for it with a temporary utility surcharge for consumers, and increase in corporate taxes on the utility companies.
Why does the US still string them up on poles, almost a century later? Weird...
what do you do when your trencher hits other buried objects? I agree -- new construction should have all services buried -- just makes sense... but...
Didn't the new enterprise show have discussions about a giant trench that was made by a misunderstood alien race? It didn't go so well for the trenchers in that case.
that is evil socialism, collectivist action
a real captain of industry, which everyone should strive to be, builds their own electric lines, transformers, bridges, power plants, automobile factories, etc, and doesn't reply on charity from others, which only destroys character
besides, we privatize things like power plants and electric utilities, because capitalism is magic fairy dust that solves all problems
nevermind that competing against an entrenched player with a network effect requires huge upfront costs that won't realize a return for over a decade, and therefore, no one in their right mind competes. and that in the meantime, a monopoly or oligarchy exists without any effective competition. and there is no market pressure to respond to customer's needs, since they have no where else to turn, they are captive
no, we still talk about the magic of free markets, even though all we have created is rent seeking parasites that drain capital to middlemen and executives who offer nothing in return. no, the real problem is government, you see
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Lack of air conditioning? Oh, boo hoo. Yes, for people with serious health problems it is a big concern, but for everyone else it is not a big deal. Try living in the northern US or Canada in the wintertime after a big storm. A power outage of more than 24 hours is a genuine emergency because people could eventually get hypothermia, and the household pipes start freezing and bursting, flooding basements and furnace systems even when the power does come back on. Last time there was a big winter storm here (90cm/3 feet of snow in 24 hours), the power was out for about 20 hours and things were getting pretty desperate. I still remember everybody barbecuing their food out in their driveways in the middle of winter, and many of the grocery stores were running short on supplies because transportation of food was limited. But if you want really bad in terms of effect on the power system, there's always the 1998 ice storm for comparison.
On the plus side, the electricity companies do have good reciprocal agreements in terms of bringing in staff from surrounding areas in the event of an emergency. They'll pull together and get the job done as soon as they can. Longer-term, yes, people should be asking about investment to "harden" the system against damage, but it will inevitably cost more money, and most people are too cheap to commit to that, especially without guarantees from the power companies that the increased fees would be put to improvements.
...the same press that roasted Bush over Katrina won't have a thing to say about Obama now?
The last longer power outages in our block were predictable. Someone driving around checking on dangers to power lines (trees, damaged masts etc) and arranging for some preventative maintenance got to be cheaper than hauling in out of state support when the weather hits.
My grandfather, a Dutch electrical engineer who was responsible for setting up most of the electrical and gas infrastructure in North-Holland shortly before and after WWII, visited to the US in the 1950s and was astonished to see all of the electrical lines hanging from poles above ground. In his view, this was so crazy.
Sure, the up-front cost of burying all of the electrical lines in Europe from the get-go was expensive, but everybody realized that it would soon pay off. Not so in the United States: apparently, they just wanted their electrical infrastructure as fast and for as little money as possible. Consequently, Americans have been paying a high price for that mistake ever since. It's really a tax on stupidity, only they've been living with it for so long that they've come to believe that it's perfectly reasonable and acceptable.
On the other hand, if the government (incl. State and local ones) were to finally make the decision to bury all of their power and communications lines (except for long-distance high-voltage), then not only would their children and grand-children etc. be very grateful, it would also create lots of jobs now and therefore be a much needed boost for the economy.
This is exactly the issue.
It's a monumental job. It's a monumental cost. It takes time.
People(idiots) fail to plan and feel that 100% uptime is a human right. But, bitching is free!
So wait, let me try to figure the logic here:
1.. We complain about how expensive new housing is that the developers build.
2. And we demand, either directly or through our county governments, that trees be planted along right of ways.
3. When the power goes out, we blame the power company.
Those right of ways exist because of statement #1, because we won't pay for the developer to bury those lines.
Another thing I don't understand is why aren't the owners of the land on which the trees grow that interfere with the power lines held to account if they don't trim their trees? Why is this suddenly the power company's job? Last I checked, I paid for power, not tree trimming. You know, personal responsibility and all that.
Because most Americans (most people?) are not willing to "pay it forward", to invest in the future. They have a hard time imagining that something that has not happened to them might happen in the future. "I've done this lots of times, nothing ever happens." All they want is the cheapest whatever. Hence Walmart.
I am a member of a electric coop and there is no WAY we are going to subsidize a project of that magnitude. We will have to get by with replacing the broken sticks and go without power every now and then.
We used to be rural back in the 30s -- and somehow the coop has managed to thrive -- by being cheap? :) They (some other electric co) just built a new coal-burner a few years back -- that my coop buys electricity from... oh oh... can you say pending rate hike -- when the benevolent gmmt shuts it down to save our lungs... ?
NO RATE HIKE! Keep our pretty-good infrastructure! YaY for Cheap and unreliable electricity! It beats the other kind.
Utilities don't have enough staff to handle severe-storm outages – the expense would send rates soaring ...
Or profits plummeting.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Which is it?
Gin grich: 'Mild Taste of What Electromagnetic Pulse Attack Would Do'...
AP: THIS SUMMER 'IS WHAT GLOBAL WARMING LOOKS LIKE'
Terrorist Fear Porn and crap laws destruction of the Constitution
UN/Agenda21/IPCC fear porn and crap laws destruction of the Constitution
Fuck Newt Gingrich and his treason
Fuck that IPCC pw3nd AP bitch with no feedback loop
At one point in history, companies selling electric power were not granted local monopolies by governments. Established and uncompetitive companies asked the government for monopolies. Some cities made this move. Others did not. Those with competing power companies had lower prices for the same product, despite duplicate infrastructure. It isn't right to use badges and guns to hurt harmless people who want to compete to sell power. Doing so increases prices and decreases quality. You can find more information here: http://mises.org/daily/5266
If companies are being ``bled dry'', why is it that wages as a percentage of GDP peaked in 1972 and has been declining ever since, while corporate profits and payments to shareholders has been steadily increasing since then?
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Since future disaster is a given, why not start now on a program to bury lines every year, year after year, with smart prioritization? The solution is known, the problem is identified, and all it takes is a management decision to go from frustration the solution is time consuming and expensive, to a "journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step".
It also shows with great clarity that high priority shovel ready projects were forsaken in the Obama Pelosi Reid stimulus spending in favor of public employee unions, and pork and earmarks added to the text of the bill so they were no longer technically earmarks and pork as defined. But practically the exact same thing, on a huge $866B a year for 5 years scale (continuing resolutions).
JJ
Interesting that no one screams "save the trees" "bury the lines". Not to mention the poles are soaked in creosote so that makes them toxic waste.
At any rate, yes it's expensive to bury lines. But I always wondered why they'll dig up a road to put in new sewer lines or gas or whatever, yet no one thinks of burying power lines while it's dug up.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
" Utilities don't have enough staff to handle severe-storm outages – the expense would send rates soaring –"
No, they managed that level of staffing for years, but then started cutting because they realized that can make more money (exec. bonus) and they can blame the weather.
Now that are setting the stage for a price hike. IN which they will hire more people, and then let them go about 3 CEOs. later.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
2000 W inverter - $150
Deep-cycle marine battery w/ plastic case - $125
Copper wiring - $50
Main battery isolater - $30
100 foot extension cord - $40
Install into vehicle. Isolate main battery from rear battery and inverter with the circuit breaker. Run extension cord into house. Able to power any home electronics you have, and can run an old refrigerator while the vehicle is running. Use only in case of emergency.
sudo make me a sandwich
I live in the path of the storm in Illinois. The damage is astounding- the worst I've seen 87. on every block trees up to 4 feet in diameter were rippled right out of the ground.
Were still w/out power. I'd say more but offsetting from a cell phone aux
aka "Failed to CALL BEFORE YOU DIG" problem
with everything buried you run into problems where somebody decides to not CBYD and then puts his Backhoe across the line(s)
(maps are fictional and you always underestimate the power of a BackHoe run by a half drunk worker)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Understatement of the year.
Exactly. Why did I lose my job to China? Hey, lets make ourselves feel better (momentarily) and go shopping at Walmart and a while later throw away the stuff we bought.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The solution is obvious, move to smaller distributed power plants. The limit as x goes to infinity would of course be no power grid, everyone has their own power generating capacity.
Below-ground installation is more costly to install and repair. It is more secure against wind damage.
But wind damage occurs infrequently and above-ground wind damage can be quickly repaired: all components are visible, easily evaluated visually and no digging is required. Parts are less inexpensive than those for below-ground.
In contrast, below-ground is a costly PITA when _flooding_ occurs. Repairs cannot begin until flood waters subside and the water table goes down..
Demand for below-ground installation is predominantly driven by homeowners concerned that poles and lines mar the appearance of their neighborhood.
As a telecom employee, I'm getting a kick out of these....nevermind. Anyhow, the process for burying lines is pretty straightforward. Look at any relatively new subdivision or business district. Do you see any poles? Probably not. Because most utilities WANT to bury lines. It's easier and looks better and most governments now request/mandate burying lines. Now, try to do that in an older neighborhood. With water/sewer/gas/fiber/copper/old steam pipes/etc. Try getting locates done in a busy older neighborhood. Oh, and in order to bury you are going to have to give some yard space to put in a ped. Watch people flip out as their front yards are shredded by boring machines (if they are lucky....) or that now there's going to be a slew of pads in their lilac bushes.
Flamebait
Serious inquiries only.
This AM (four days after the storm), there are still giant trees lying across major roads.
This might be why the power isn't back on everywhere.
In several cases, homeowners were out Saturday and Sunday clearing away trees from state highways.
In at least a couple cases, trees have been removed and Pepco is starting to drill holes to put in new utility poles where the utility poles were snapped off.
I live in central Maryland. There is more to this than just a Derecho. We get every two to three years. They're not unheard of.
We had a mild winter and a cool spring. The winter did not have any significant snow or ice. So weak tree limbs didn't come down. There weren't many significant thunderstorms in the spring either, so no significant dead wood fell because of that. Here we are in early summer, and we get the first major storm of the season and all that weak and dying wood that hasn't been cleared out of the trees comes down at once. In many cases it takes the whole damned tree down. This wouldn't have been a big deal if it had been spread over a few storms here and there, but instead it happened all at once.
In so many ways, this was a perfect storm...
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
So, how many of the following beliefs do YOU share?
Creationism
No such thing as (human caused) global warming
Birthers
Saddam Hussein had WMDs and worked with Al Queda (believe it or not, a lot of Americans still think this, especially Fox viewers)
George W. Bush was the right person to vote for the first time
George W. Bush was the right person to vote for the second time
Sarah Palin is an intelligent, thoughtful person worthy of the highest offices in the land
Being "elite" (definition: the best at anything) is bad
Deficit spending is bad in a recession (unfortunately the Europeans seem to really think this)
Teaching students critical thinking is a bad thing (well at least in Texas)
I could go on and on (unfortunately) but you get the point. I would imagine there is a high correlation between these beliefs, right or wrong. If you're not embarrassed by them, why mod me down? Anyway, may I add one last contentious point that may or may not fit this demographic?
These people are Apple haters.
This is what happens when energy resources/policy are under attack. Provided the anti-energy nonsense can be eliminated, it would behoove utilities as well as the public to adopt a policy of burying electrical lines any time overhead lines are taken down, whether by storms, accidents, or aging.
Any Slashdot user from Connecticut would no doubt remember the extended power outages last fall following a late-October snow storm. The high forestation level of the state is a source of pride here - we love our trees - but with leaves still on the trees, snow damaged was magnified greatly. In addition, it became painfully clear that the proper preventative tree trimming had not been done. In the resultant study / inquiry into the unprecedented outages we learned the largest power company, CT Light & Power, had gradually cut funding to its line maintenance trimming over the years. I'd be curious to know what the trendline is in the hardest hit areas for line maintenance spending.
Can anyone tell me if equipment (transformers, etc.) not being manufactured in the U.S. contributed to the delay of power restoration at all? If not, could this be a factor in a larger-scale outage?
Cause.. look1 Someone claims Obama wasn't born in the US!!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A repeat of the super solar storm may take out power in most of the world. It may fry most satellites and computers too. It may takes months if not years to restore power then. Some ice core evidence suggests such storm happens about once per 500 years.
the fanatical organization, Equilibrium of Mankind. Originally Amarrian in origin, EoM can be found in most corners of Empire space, attempting to accomplish their devious plan of annihilating the human race.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
It is rare for a heat wave in the US to be blamed for more than 20 deaths. The worst one that turned up in a casual Google search was 1936, where 5000+ people died. That was before the wide availability of air conditioning.
In 2003, a heat wave in Europe killed 70,000.
Europeans can complain about US infrastructure when theirs gets within an order of magnitude of ours at preserving citizens' lives.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Hugh Pickens writes points out a report
When a Pickens pushes a story about energy and infrastructure I'm always wondering: You're not related to T. Boone Pickens by any chance?
Over the last 30 years, electric distribution has become much more automated and fault-tolerant. It is designed to route around local faults almost instantaneously. However, that same design makes it much less tolerant of widespread faults. When there are numerous hits to the distribution grid, entire substations must be taken offline, both to protect the substation equipment (which is very expensive and can take weeks to replace) and to maintain stability on the transmission grid.
Once repairs are underway, it is much safer for the people working on the lines to keep large sections of the distribution grid powered down than to have individual circuits coming on-line as they are cleared.
Following Hurricane Ike in September 2008, we were without power for 10 days while Centerpoint Energy put the distribution grid back together. Everyone needs to be aware that this is the nature of the automated distribution grid and it is wise to plan for such situations.
So can somebody here tell us just how much it costs to lay a 100ft run of underground power wire? I've seen internet cables laid around here, and they do it by digging a hole every 100ft or so, using a horizontal drill to connect them, and then pull the wire through. This way the wire can go under any surface pavement and the amount of digging involved is very small. I have a really hard time believing that this costs more than wires on poles, even without considering the different maintenance requirements.
Even when hurricanes pass by they don't cause this much damage. The straight-line winds gusting to 70 MPH (115 KPH) for over 15 minutes is what brought a lot of things down that wouldn't normally have come down in a storm.
As it is, I never lost power (for a change) but I'm working from home due to the office complex where I work is in autistic mode because of Verizon not being able to get some central system online.
I hate to think what would happen if we were ever hit full-on by a Category 5 hurricane...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Once upon a time in America this would have been the ideal solution. The natural gas pump stations actually ran on the gas itself, burning some in local generators when needed. Then along came the EPA with yet more emissions mandates that would have cost metric buttloads of money to implement for these not really all that numerous stations... next thing you know those stations stop using local generation and switch to the grid.
The natural gas supply _used_ to be one of the most reliable services there was; it took something really big and nasty to take it out. Now, depending on where you are, you may lose your gas supply not too long after the local power goes down. An NG generator is still a great option since it obviates the need for local fuel storage; its just not the slam dunk for longer term use that it used to be.
I'd get a diesel myself; there are severe limits to how much gas an average homeowner can store (unless you have detached storage for it). Diesel is a lot safer and in proper containers with proper treatment will last longer in storage. Gasoline (especially modern EPA approved emissions blends) don't have a good shelf life even in a well sealed container.
I live in Columbus, OH. Absolutely every storm of any significance here, and plenty of seeminly minor ones, results in a power outage.
It seems evident to me that AEP does not invest in preventative maintenance. If they did, there would still be outages in major storms, but the effects wouldn't be nearly so wide-spread, and the repair times would be much shorter. The problem is that with an undermaintained infrastructure, minor damages and weaknesses accumulate, leading to more weak links that are more easily damaged in a storm.
So why don't they invest in preventative maintenance? Money. If they did better up-keep it would reduce their profit margin, and as a highly regulated monopoly, they are very constrained on how much they can raise rates for any purpose. So they pinch every penny.
On the other hand, if they wait for catastrophic failure, they can whine to state and federal governments for emergency aid money. Now, they can perform the repairs, but they don't have to pay for it. We do, out of tax money, rather than our electricity bill, so it doesn't affect AEP's bottom line.
To make matters worse, light bulbs don't last more than a week here, due to ubiquitous voltage spikes. We have surge protectors on electronics, but the surge protectors get damaged periodically. We have to mail-order 130V light bulbs just to get a little extra life out of them. (Yes, the CFLs get fried too.) I can't even begin to estimate the real costs of being an AEP customer, but they don't stop at the energy bill.
Utilities don't have enough staff to handle severe-storm outages - the expense would send rates soaring - and so they rely on out-of-state utilities to send help ..."
So the CEO says it's a choice between soaring rates and prolonged outages. These outages cost something too. If your business depends on electrical power, you're shut down. We're liable to end up with backup generators everywhere.
They used to have adequate numbers of linemen. But ever since the waves of mergers and the CEOs began lining their pockets, they cut way back on the staff.
So now, widespread T storms knock out power for a week. I shudder to think of how long power would be out now after a cat 3 hurricane or a widespread ice storm. It could be weeks.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Even in rural germany (Hessen/Pferdekopf/Taunus, Sachsen), in deep mountain, the most I see are the high voltage transportation (the big metal tree you see as high as 10 or 20 meter). As soon as a new line is put or an old one renovated , it get buried. There is an excellent reason for that with respect to some very harsh winter with lotta snow. That even happens for phone line. As for France, even there all the poles which were there in my youth in the rural zone (north of compiegne, and another zone west of macif central) are gone.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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Why doesn't it?
Because severely catastrophic storms are rare, and because it costs. Yet people want cheap energy. If you are fine paying 10 times as much for power, then the electric company can retain 10 times the usual staff.
Also, it wouldn't be "Armies"
Not sure what you would call those long lines of people and equipment rolling in from five surrounding states, but we can use another word if you like.
You need to grow up and stop making excuses.
Uh, okay. How about I am not petulant about not having 100% uptime on a fairly cheap service that faces huge challenges brought on by forces of nature.
There is no reason not to have high expectation
Why?
and considering the response to these issues is getting worse over the last 25 years maybe something else is going on?
It is?
like exec. being more focuses on bonuses then long term quality.
Citation needed.
we are talking about weeks, not 48 hours.
My power was restored in less than 32 hours. Perhaps the lines around my home were not so damaged as others. Infrastructure sustaining heavier damage will likely take longer to repair.
Oh, never mind. Forget all this reason and sense.
Fuck the man!
Undergrounding could be a solution. Sure it's expensive at first but think about it. How much money does it cost when power is down and you have to fix it ? The men to send on the field to fix it, the equipment to replace, the time to replace it (labor), indirect cost such as companies and people who can't operate without power which no money goes to the city they operate. I think the cost of undergrouding can cut those costs especially in area's where the risk is high for severe weather and for me that makes lots of sense to use underground wires insteads of traditional poles.
How gracefully do underground power lines age? Are there any (of a statisically significant amount) that are even 40 years old? Yes, hanging wire does seem like folly, but the critics seem to be screaming 'free lunch' as a care-free alternative. I have to wonder how prevalent underground placement is in earthquake-prone areas like Italy or Turkey. And replacing underground wire runs would be even more expensive than replacing sewer lines (assuming here the cables are in housings, not buried 'naked').
On the other hand, underground power cables could really help thin the heard of slack-jawed idiots running rented backhoes without getting the utilities marked out first.
I think I'll just hop in my new Nissan Leaf and.. oh.. Never mind.
Organization? You must be joking..
When you've got temperatures around 100F and humidity over 90%, you become very keen on air conditioning.
Under those conditions, air conditioning provides a significant increase in comfort, but it is not essential for anyone who is not in an especially vulnerable physical state (elderly, infirm etc.)
Americans are obsessed with air conditioning because they are conditioned to believe that a neutral physical environment is the only acceptable state. Any concession to physical realities beyond their control is an affront to their God-given dominion over nature.
In the hottest places in the world people have learned to live without technological crutches, but Americans can't hack a few sweaty days without AC (again, not counting the infirm for whom special considerations are reasonable). American dwellings are built as though technology can provide complete impunity over climate, and thus they lack all the features that thousands of years of human ingenuity have developed to manage hot climates (shade, air flow, etc.).
Of course, it is also much cheaper to clear cut land and build cookie-cutter suburban tracts, rather than work around trees and other natural features that might provide a more inherently livable environment. Screw it, we're always going to have more power and we will always get paid more every year to buy it!
And bury every last bit of aerial cable? Where I live it's a mixture of it - phone and cable almost always run on poles except downtown. Electric is the one that is seriously mixed. Atwells Ave, Broadway, Westminster St. all have buried electric cable. But they should bury ALL of it.
From experience in the metropolitan St. Louis area a few years ago, in which storms knocked out power for over a week to over a million customers, the principal problem is downed trees causing damage to above-ground power and communications lines. The local power company, AmerenUE, subsequently performed extensive tree trimming to minimize the risk from future strong storms. (This is far less expensive than burying the lines.) We've had no major outages since--but no major test yet either. Now that DC Area residents know the danger trees present to the power and communications infrastructure, I suspect Pepco will be given a green light (and money) to perform major tree trimming. A high profile disaster is usually what it takes for people to take action. (The poorly publicized experience in St. Louis apparently wasn't enough).
. . .the fact remains that the US is significantly behind where it should be in terms of infrastructure, education, healthcare, etc. given its wealth and natural resources.
Which, frankly, is worse than being an actual Third World country. We are underperforming despite a total lack of excuses for doing so, exhibiting the lack of initiative that Americans love to blame for the problems of the genuniely poor.
Because Americans despite knowing better are seemingly not working to decentralizing their power and utilities, it seems they are not interested in taking responsibility for their own lives but are happy watching soaps on tv asking why when something goes wrong.. Americans it seems do not want to be independent any longer but are happy being milking cattle for power/utilities. The spirit of independence seems to have faded and is nowhere in sight. Which is sad for someone looking in from abroad. Where are all the solar panels on your rooftops, heck in China where I've been travelling extensively the last few years, the building code in many cities even requires newer buildings to have solar roofing etc. I find it funny and sad, that it seems that the Chinese price energy independence and energy stability higher than Americans who price themselves as supporters of independence and freedom. There are benefits to thinking independence into the equation - Imagine the jobs you could create if you bough "homegrown" or foreign made solar panels and put them on every rooftop,.. Windmills that extract water from the air exist - I believe are even manufactured in the US... Take a step into the future and become free again! And do so while personally winning big financially at the same time!!! What are you waiting for ?
MS, ALS, Aphasia ? http://globability.org - Me http://einarpetersen.com
There is generally FEMA funding available for burying wires.
Every time a hurricane hits St. Croix (U.S. Virgin Islands - an unincorporated U.S. Territory), they allocate funding for burying the wires. 80% of it finds its way into various pockets, and the 20% left over goes to balancing the wires back up on poles for the next hurricane.
Quite the little income generator, for the people with the pockets.
We never had any brownouts, despite record usage of electricity last year.
Whoops, try again. I got family in Austin, Dallas and Houston. I bought everyone Surefire flashlights last Christmas specifically because of the power outages they'd experienced. Everyone kind of looked at me funny ("Really? You bought me a flashlight for Christmas?") until repeat power outages this spring turned me from a gadget geek into a prophet. :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
A. I was talking about times of peak demand during the heat wave last summer, and B. I live in North Texas (in the south plains), and haven't experienced any blackouts of any length of time in five years, where the last one I had was where the transformer on my street blew up, but maybe our power is more reliable here than it is in the big cities. I certainly haven't heard anything about repeated power outages from friends or family throughout the state. Power going out here is a big deal, due to the heat.
but maybe our power is more reliable here than it is in the big cities.
Oh, yes, I'm sorry, I forgot. Amarillo and Lubbock are the "Real Texas," filled with Capitalist Heroes pf Rugged Individualism while San Antonio, Austin and Houston are the Socialist hellholes filled with lazy, grasping welfare cheats who are too stupid to keep their power on.
Just one thing though. The next time we're fighting for our independence, could you guys up there do me a favor and actually get in the fight? The good people of San Antonio and Houston are tired of carrying your water for you. It's a little like listening to people in Alaska talk about how people in Philedelphia and Boston aren't part of "the Real America."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
First from a Eurelectric PDF is the subject of compensation:
Finland
Compensation is paid after an application is filed by the customer. The compensation is based on the duration of the outage and the annual network fee.
United Kingdom
Functional demands are defined for normal operating and weather conditions and three different categories of abnormal conditions. At normal operating and weather conditions, 99.5 % of the customers should be reconnected within 18 hours. Outages >18h give a compensation of £50 for households and £100 for other customers. The Netherlands
For unplanned outages more than 4 hours the network company has to compensate household customers €35, small companies €910 and large industries €0.35 per kW subscribed power up to €91000.
Ireland
For unplanned outages, the network company guarantees reconnection within 24 hours. Customers without supply for more than 24 hours are compensated with €65 for households and €135 for companies. For each additional 12- hour interruption, €35 is paid additionally.
France
According to a 2001 law, all customers have a right to compensation. From 6 hours outage and for each following 6-hour period the transmission and distribution companies pay compensation corresponding to 2 % of the fixed annual charge.
----------
And next, on improvements. Here in the U.S. here is information from a PDF from Galvin Power.org
In the early 1990s, Naperville’s municipal utility was not performing well and the city council held a vote on whether to sell it to the larger, area-wide utility. At this time, three or four customer outages per year were common. The sale was defeated by onlyone vote in the city council and the municipal utility leadership decided instead to pursue perfect power reliability without raising costs. They started applying the concepts behind what is today known as Six Sigma or quality improvement. Over a period of almost 20 years, the local grid was transformed into one of the most reliable suburban grids in the country — without raising rates.
Primen. (2001). The Cost of Power Disturbances to Industrial and Digital Economy Companies. Consortium for Electric Infrastructure to Support a Digital Society. Madison: EPRI.
Galvin Electricity Initiative. (2010, April). Naperville Case Study. Retrieved from Galvin Electricity Initiative
Uhhh, a little butthurt there? All I said was that we didn't have power outages, while you claimed you did. I never said anything about "Real Texans" or any such BS.
And I don't know why you are bragging about where you live. You didn't fight in the War for Independence, and I lived more than half my life in southeast Texas, including some time in Houston.
And for the record, it is true that Lubbock and Amarillo are filled with capitalist heroes. This actually came as a major surprise to me, as it always seemed to me like they spent a lot of money on police, but their budget is really and truly bare bones, and they stay within their budgets, cutting as soon as there is an income shortfall. Also amazingly low property tax rates in the county. I pay maybe 1/10th of what the guys two blocks down in the city pay. But this area didn't get this way because I moved here, nor did I move here because it was that way. But I do respect them for it, more so than I do any other place I have ever lived.
And for the record, it is true that Lubbock and Amarillo are filled with capitalist heroes
Yes, Capitalist Heroes who survive on massive welfare subsidies from the government. Left to the vagaries of the market, they'd be gone in a heartbeat.
The New York Times: "HARVESTING POVERTY; The Fabric of Lubbock's Life"
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/opinion/harvesting-poverty-the-fabric-of-lubbock-s-life.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
"Lubbock is a rock-solid, conservative kind of place, located where northwest Texas meets the southernmost part of the great American plains. Its citizens like to think of themselves as self-reliant straight talkers. It seems strange, then, to think of this region as a sprawling welfare case.
But the cotton farms that give Lubbock much of its identity thrive from huge government subsidies that drain the federal treasury and shelter the industry from the discipline of the market. ...."
It's like listening to people who survive on Medicare rail against the evils of "socialized medicine..."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Failure is the new acceptable. Nothing really works all that well on a good day in America anymore from power companies to cell phones to cable to hospitals to airlines to local government to anything else. America is a country where getting a D+ is good enough and if that means that your city of a million people can't have power for 3 weeks after a hailstorm then that's what it means. And if you press them on the point, the answer, like the one I get from Duke power - is that they'll have to raise rates 19% if we actually want to have electricity.
That's why.
According to the experts on 60 minutes, the stuxnet code can be modified to strike back at the US, and their experts thought it was likely to happen.
Did it?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If you took away my electricity right now, I would not be living in "squalor and filth." I would be living without electricity. Since I already grow my own vegetables and eggs, and most importantly, I brew my own beer...... I and a lot of the other poors outside of your "area of profitability" will be living quite comfortably.
Our Corporate Lobbiest who keep paying our Congress and Senate to pay more attention to Wars for Oil and Wars for Supposed Profit.
Instead of funneling the money back home, to help the people who's money it is actually, they are more concerned with spending money in the Middle East, and on stupid ass crap, like movie and music pirates. Fuck Joe America and his family that is homeless and jobless thanks to the banks, lets kill us some more Terrorist. Oh ya, and we got to get them horrible criminals over here to America so we can try them. Ya, we talking about you rapist and you MR. Mega.
The USA policy is so far from where it should be at, it's not even funny anymore.
Our government has shown it does NOT care about it's people, only about making money. And in case you don't understand the Oil situation, the USA wants to drain rest of the world of it's Oil, so we can then rule the world on our vast reserves.
Be seeing you...
Why is this categorised as "Earth" when the Australian stories are categorised as "Australia"...? Where's the US's cutesy Crocodile Dundee hat equivalent... A stetson maybe?
We had a HUGE ice storm a few years back. Some were without power in the dead of winter for 2 weeks. Bunch of crybabies. That is the problem with most people, without "creature comforts" they will die...so perhaps it wouldn't be a bad thing, kill off those in the lower end of the gene pool!
Except it wasnt an infrastructure issue, most Europeans did not have and have never needed air conditioners before that event.
The US is in the same boat, with Texas being the Germany and Norway (combined, as we export oil) of the US. If we don't find some way to extricate ourselves, we will go down with the ship, I fear.
That's why. People like you give Texas a bad name, and I'm tired of me and my friends getting looked at askance when we list UT or Texas A&M on our resumes.
Of course, what's really ticking me off is the double amputee veteran I met who was begging by the side of the road the other day. The man gave our country his legs, and in return we gave him a chunk of cardboard to beg with. No, don't even start, the VA is a bad joke.
It's shameful, and maybe we as an electorate might be able to do something about that if we didn't have a bunch of Fox news parrots screaming "SOCIALISM! SOCIALISM!" every time we try to talk about our country paying its debts and looking after our own...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
It's obviously the fault of the unions.
Ask any right-winger.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Have the power utility companies plug a power strip in at the local Starbucks -- and feed the community power grid off of that. Plus, they have free WiFi!
...look how the powers that "be" decided to handle the oil spill in the Gulf... They tried to wait as long as possible to fix it so the impact would be largest so they could push a political agenda.
This will be the same.
During our tour of Europe last year, I was pleasantly surprised at how few utility poles I saw. I guess they get it, we don't. It's not just a matter of doing them all at once, but I will tell you that dozens of times every year I see road construction where they move power poles and dig up underground utilities, but I have yet to see a single instance where they actually buried the lines and got rid of the poles. It's absurd. I agree about the trillions we spent and got little to show for it. What an ideal opportunity to fix a problem that has been a real headache for all of us. There's not a part of the country that's not subject to these kinds of outages at least part of the year. I was one of the lucky ones, my power was only out for 3 days, but believe me, with 90 degree heat, that was enough! Let's stop with the nonsense and BURY them.
Watching the news, I notice most all of the trees that have fallen have some type of rotten wood exposed. The utility is not responsible for private property trees that have fallen due to lack of attention, "nurturing."
Nature's way of culling such defects have accumulated in wide-spread tree failure due to lack of attention.
Distribution line pruning is regulated within ten feet of each side of the power conductors, fifteen feet is more desirable, however this is not allowed by many customers resulting in large areas experiencing power outage.
Don't you think...? Or don't you?
Powerline workers came in from surrounding states to help restore power. We were without power for around a week. While I'm not sure that the Power industry is prone to this, but these days, most outfits toend toward having minimal staff for the work at hand. Then when there is an emergency, they have to rely on this imported labor situation.
Those places might be hit also. So there are only so many workers to go around.
This is the new USA folks. Minimize labor costs wherever they may be. The present power infrastructure and maintenance is not designed for any large scale outages.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"extremely expensive option of burying all of the region's electrical lines". the power company monopoly suffers from inertia, not lack of funding.
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As my Almish friend said, whats the big deal, cut up the tree dry it and use if for fuel in the winter. The problem is we are a spoiled nation, use to the conveniences we have and not capable or willing to give them up without blaming the ones who only provide us a service for our own self indulgences.
We can plan for the normal stuff, but like the 100 year flood or 500 year flood (had one of those about 15 years ago) you can't have enough people on hand to take care of those 500 year events or storms that are far beyond the norm without making your product prohibitively expensive. Normally the power companies would just bring in help from neighboring areas, but when an atypical storm covers as many as 4 or 5 adjoining areas the extra help just isn't there. We used to live way out in the boonies. Never did have a power outage of more than a few minutes. Since we moved here which is only about a 2 miles from the city limits we've had many failures. After the Year 2000 scare I waited for generators to go on sale. in less than 12 years I've put over 120 hours on that generator. Much of Michigan is swamp (that's wet lands for the PC crowd, but it smells like a swamp, looks like a swamp, and grows one Hell of a crop of big Mosquitoes ...It's a swamp!) That means fast growing trash trees. IOW the wood isn't much good for anything. They can completely clear the right of way and in 10 to 15 years the dead falls are getting into the power lines so they have crews just about all year that are cutting trees. If they hired enough people to do all the regular maintenance and keep the right of ways clear, our electricity would be much more expensive. Almost as much as they pay in California.
I live ten feet -literally, ten feet - from an 18 Kvolt transmission line that feeds over a thousand customers. I'm on the mid atlantic coast in a 200+ year old house.
The power company does less maintenance every single year. Every. Single. Year. There are more incidents and more failures every year, too.
The transformers are not replaced until they explode, an increasingly common event as they age. The wires ("tree wire" as they call it) are not inspected or upgraded until a lighting strike blows the rubber off them, and pine trees start exploding and burning from the arcs. When that happens, the trips at the end of the road do not cut out, they haven't worked in decades - the power has to be cut from a central location, and that doesn't happen until a half hour after we call in the strike. Meanwhile, if it's raining (and it usually is) the lines arc four or five times a minute, with blinding flashes and noise like a stick of dynamite going off every time. By the time the power company arrives and the power is shut off, everything's been slammed with ridiculous numbers of voltage fluctuations, so all the pole transformers are half fried and fail even faster.
Meanwhile, where my in-laws live, the electricity comes from a co-op. The co-op has not decreased maintenance, because instead of spending all their profits on influencing legislation and increasing executive salaries, they are just delivering the power, reliably, as if it were an honest job.