Banker & Tradesman published an article today title Digging For Truth On Why We Can’t Bury Power Lines. The article notes studies have said that underground lines mean 35% fewer outages, that Massachusetts municipal utilities generally seem to have fewer outages, and points to the muni in Concord burying lines each year, and now being up to 40%. From the article –
“A few municipal utility companies, including Concord’s, have begun to put their local power lines underground – taking away, in one fell swoop, the danger of massive outages after snow, ice and wind storms. “The key is you don’t have these massive outages because the network is protected,” said Patrick Mehr of the Massachusetts Alliance for Municipal Electric Choice.
No Big Dig
OK, it’s great that the good folks in upscale Concord can spring for this, but what about the rest of us?
Well yes, it’s an extra cost, but hardly a crazy one – about $600,000 to put a mile of lines underground each year. Even so, Concord residents still pay 40 percent less on their electric bills than neighboring towns that get their power from big utility companies, according to Mehr.
And this is far from a crazy idea – in fact, New England and our country as a whole is a backwater when it comes to power delivery, with many European companies having put much of their electric grids underground.
No one is advocating another massive Big Dig, this time to bury all the region’s power lines. But Concord has hardly done it overnight – it is slowly but steadily doing it on a decades-long timeline, with 40 percent of the town’s power lines now running underground.
Interestingly, the idea invoked a less than enthusiastic response from a spokesman for National Grid, one of the state’s trio of big power companies. He cited the expense of putting lines underground, while also noting that if there are problems, it’s much more difficult to fix, since you have to dig up the lines to make repairs.
Still, he acknowledged an industry study that found a 35 percent decrease in outages when lines were put underground.”
Medfield02052's Blog 
One possible approach to “phase” something like burying the lines into Medfield would be to preclude streets being dug up (witness the recent work done on North Street) without some type of communications / coordination in advance. Specifically, the town could require a hearing/discussion with the utility companies, assuming they “own the poles,” prior to any digging being done by anyone (telcos/FiOS, DPW, etc.). I have no idea if it would have been feasible but to have been able to bury the lines on North Street as part of the recent project there could have been a win-win.
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Congratulations to Concord! From coastal southern New Jersey we plan to put pressure on politicians, utility providers and citizens who care about the environment. How silly to have an antique, ugly system for electric delivery. LET’S GO UNDERGROUND! If the water, sewer, cable and gas can come to us sensibly, why not electricity. All suggestions are welcome.
Thanks.
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