Underground cables for the last mile wouldn't be subject to hurricane damage. I don't know how often long-haul high voltage lines get taken out by hurricanes but I suspect it is not that often.
Why build a last-mile power grid that can be so easily disrupted?
You can’t bury much power in Houston… they’d be underwater in the next hurricane. Underground lines means underground vaults and transformers too…
Some areas of Houston are 16 feet or less above sea level..
Bury a 8 foot transformer vault (they’d be deeper than that likely but just say 8 feet)
And get a 10 foot storm surge and you’ve got 2 feet of water higher than the transformer vault… try fixing that! Above ground is the way to go there
They had massive amounts of help from west Texas and Oklahoma power people coming in. I drove through Houston yesterday. No gas and no traffic lights make some areas a real pain.
They’ll get it fixed up, after all Beryl did hit as a cat 1 hurricane… at least they aren’t below sea level like NOLA
Houston is built mostly on swamp with a high water table and routine flooding. I doubt underground cabling would be significantly more reliable and would be much more expensive to install and maintain
i read from some people in that field that it was basically unreasonable to try to fund for something like that. and that it wouldnt completely stop power outage.
unreasonable for houston i think it was. houston is i think the largest or second largest city in america besides a city in alaska.
Nordic countries mandate that private electric companies move their cables (last mile and between power stations) underground, even in rural areas to reduce likelihood of outages.
The process has been ongoing for many years now. One way to incentivize it is to mandate high reimbursements to customers on outage.
Underground cables for the last mile wouldn't be subject to hurricane damage. I don't know how often long-haul high voltage lines get taken out by hurricanes but I suspect it is not that often.
Why build a last-mile power grid that can be so easily disrupted?