More expensive is an understatement, I think it costs like 10x more to put them underground. It's also very difficult and disruptive in dense areas where there's all sorts of pipes and cables already there.

That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, and some of their network is already underground, but the reason it isn't universal is that it genuinely is very hard to do.

Well, still less expensive than power outage i.e. economy outage. Losses must be enormous, logically you should be happy to pay 10x for underground cables.

Logically, yes. But that's seldom how things go. Burying the wires would be a major capital expenditure. Bonds need to be issued, depending on the municipality, voters may need to get involved. Shareholders, where applicable, don't like it.

Yes, the cost for repair is high, but that's part of the operating budget, and each instance of repair is much cheaper than the cable-burying project, so the cost is "amortized" in a weird way that seems more palatable.

Meanwhile, the utility isn't held responsible for the economic costs related to the outage, so they don't care about those costs. Even in California, where the utility has been found liable when their infrastructure starts wildfires that kill people, they still aren't doing massive cable-burying projects.

I don't agree with it. I think it's stupid and short-sighted. But there are reasons. Most of them start with "c" and end with "apitalism".

In rural areas, battery backup might be cheaper than upgrading the grid. Or at least that’s what they plan to do in Vermont.

The last estimate I saw was $2B. This event is likely to or already has exceeded that in losses.

It's not cheap. Neither is this repair cycle.

Houston is doing this for new developments but it’s infeasible for existing neighborhoods because there’s already a bunch of other stuff underground there and its a very slow and expensive process.

The correct way to handle above-ground powerlines is to perform regular maintenance on any trees growing near the lines. Centerpoint skimped on this expense and it resulted in 85% of Houston losing power.

I think is a huge part of it. I saw a Houston area news channel interviewing locals and some said that they had requested clearing from Center Point energy on the property months/years before anything would ever get trimmed. Austin linemen who agreed to travel down there said they were told to pay for their own meals and hotels (aka no per diem available) when they didn’t -have- to go there and were trying to help sent by Austin Energy. Who is going to volunteer to go under those terms?

I'm in South Texas (not Houston though) and same - I had trees growing into the power lines in my alley. I put in a request to trim them and was basically told nicely to pound sand (I think they said something like they might get around to it in six to twelve months). I ended up paying a trimmer to take care of it, but I don't imagine that everyone in my (lower-income) neighborhood can afford that.

I mean tbf the linemen are making like $120/hr (double pay) so its probably still worth coming here. But it’s not a good look for Centerpoint and shows what they’re focused on.

Trenching is very expensive especially when other lines are in the ground.

I heard an interesting suggestion to double or triple every #X poles for stability so one fallen tree does not take out so many in a row.

Modern installation of buried utilities in urban areas is often done with horizontal boring these days. Minimal damage to roads and other infrastructure that way.