Facing hurricanes and public opposition to overhead lines, utilities are paying extra to go underground
26 Jan 2018 | 16:00 GMT
By Peter Fairley
In the past six months, transmission lines have been destroyed by hurricanes in Puerto Rico, singed by wildfires in California, and bitterly opposed by residents in Utah and Pennsylvania who want to stop utilities from building more.
Such problems have grid operators literally thinking deeper. Increasingly, utilities in the United States and elsewhere are routing power underground. Puerto Rico’s grid rebuild is a prime example: A proposal, crafted by an industry-government consortium late last year, calls for “undergrounding” transmission to harden a power system still recovering from Hurricanes Irma and Maria.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/utilities-bury-more-transmission-lines-to-prevent-storm-damage