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Burying the power lines may avoid a lot of problems in the future, but I cannot guess how much it will improve the situation.
Some of the problem is flooding with salt water.
http://nation.time.com/2012/11/02/wh...ble-with-salt/
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/on...bury-grid.html
Simply burying all the lines has drawbacks such as
It costs ten times as much
It can be more susceptible to flooding and salt water
Underground wiring can take much longer to repair
About 3% of the electricity "leaks" out and is lost to the ground
If the ground overheats, power will be lost, as it was in Brooklyn the other year when it was really hot, and that lasted for weeks (This could possibly be mitigated by replacing blacktop with light colored stone like was done in places around Tokyo last year to reduce heat island effects. The pavement is much less hot than before in the summer.)
Of course burying the lines looks much better and tree branches cannot bring down lines.
However, that cannot really be the problem because all the electrical lines outside downtown Tokyo are above ground with lots of trees, and we do not lose power when we get cat 1, 2, or 3 typhoons, which we do more or less every week some summers... The Japanese dont refer to typhoons by name, just by number, because there are so many of them.
For example, a typical middle sized street may be lined with five story elm trees with wires going through the middle of the tree. The trees are kept trimmed, and the wires seem to have some thick padded covering. After a typhoon, there are lots of branches littering the ground, but I have never seen it cause a power outage in more than 20 years. Transformers do not seem to blow up here nearly as often as in the US.
Another thing that was amazing was that all the power plants continued running during the three hours of violent shaking we had during the quake last year. (When there was a moderate quake in Honolulu, the engineers shut the generators down to avoid them being damaged, blacking out Honolulu for an entire day.) The shaking was so violent that friends up in Sendai were thrown to the floor and could not get up, yet the generators did not shut down for the most part. I guess they are isolated in some way from quakes.
In the last 20 years, the only times I have lost power were
a plane crashed into high tension wires, 2 hours
a crane snagged high tension wires, 5 hours
a construction crew severed a buried power line, 2 hours
twice lightning struck something, and the power went out for 5 minutes, and then it reset and came back on
one 2-hour rolling blackout right after Fukushima blew up
In general, the power does not go out here when there is a typhoon. I have never lost power during a typhoon.
So, perhaps the problem is not whether the lines are buried, but how strong the lines are that are strung in the air, whether the trees are maintained, and the kinds of poles? There are no wooden poles here. They would not last. The entire US grid needs to be reconstructed because the outages cause so much trouble and are so expensive.
Perhaps rather than burying the lines at ten times the cost, they need to replace all wooden poles and the lines in the air and spend double or triple so that the above ground lines would be more resilient?
We dont have ice storms like in the northeast US, but the winter weather in 4/5ths of Japan is really nasty at times.
I have been in hurricanes in New Jersey and Connecticut, and believe me, the typhoons in Japan are much much worse, and some years, they happen every week in the fall, so we are not even comparing similar storm strength and frequency. imagine something like a cat 2 hurricane tracking up right offshore from Florida to New England four or five times a year. That is essentially what happens in Japan in many years. A cat 3, 4, or even 5 typhoon hits Kyushu and then follows Shikoku and Honshu for 1,000 miles, passing over 100 million people before finally going out to sea. And yet we lose power at 1/50th the rate of the US northeast. (The cat 5 was bad and knocked over a lot of the high tension lines, so in that case some people did not have electricity for three weeks, but that happens rarely.)
We were paying around 20 cents per kWh before Fukushima. So the cost is not that much more. And actually, my appliances use 1/2 to 1/3 the electricity of appliances in the US, so from that point of view, I am paying 20 cents per kWh but using half the electricity for the same service. so in effect paying at 10 cents a kwh. With no storm outage in more than 20 years. My electric bill is $50 when I am not using heating or cooling, $70 a month in the summer with air conditioning set to 70F 24 hours a day when it is 90F outside, and $100 dollars in the winter with the air conditioner set to heating and keeping the apartment at 70F 24 hours a day when it is 40F during the day and 30F at night.
My guess is that the utilities in the northeast put up the cheapest lines they can get away with and then just deal with the outages when they happen, in effect externalizing the problems to the customers.
Some of the problem is flooding with salt water.
http://nation.time.com/2012/11/02/wh...ble-with-salt/
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/on...bury-grid.html
Simply burying all the lines has drawbacks such as
It costs ten times as much
It can be more susceptible to flooding and salt water
Underground wiring can take much longer to repair
About 3% of the electricity "leaks" out and is lost to the ground
If the ground overheats, power will be lost, as it was in Brooklyn the other year when it was really hot, and that lasted for weeks (This could possibly be mitigated by replacing blacktop with light colored stone like was done in places around Tokyo last year to reduce heat island effects. The pavement is much less hot than before in the summer.)
Of course burying the lines looks much better and tree branches cannot bring down lines.
However, that cannot really be the problem because all the electrical lines outside downtown Tokyo are above ground with lots of trees, and we do not lose power when we get cat 1, 2, or 3 typhoons, which we do more or less every week some summers... The Japanese dont refer to typhoons by name, just by number, because there are so many of them.
For example, a typical middle sized street may be lined with five story elm trees with wires going through the middle of the tree. The trees are kept trimmed, and the wires seem to have some thick padded covering. After a typhoon, there are lots of branches littering the ground, but I have never seen it cause a power outage in more than 20 years. Transformers do not seem to blow up here nearly as often as in the US.
Another thing that was amazing was that all the power plants continued running during the three hours of violent shaking we had during the quake last year. (When there was a moderate quake in Honolulu, the engineers shut the generators down to avoid them being damaged, blacking out Honolulu for an entire day.) The shaking was so violent that friends up in Sendai were thrown to the floor and could not get up, yet the generators did not shut down for the most part. I guess they are isolated in some way from quakes.
In the last 20 years, the only times I have lost power were
a plane crashed into high tension wires, 2 hours
a crane snagged high tension wires, 5 hours
a construction crew severed a buried power line, 2 hours
twice lightning struck something, and the power went out for 5 minutes, and then it reset and came back on
one 2-hour rolling blackout right after Fukushima blew up
In general, the power does not go out here when there is a typhoon. I have never lost power during a typhoon.
"Some of the most reliable utilities are in the heartland states of Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas.
In those states, the power is out an average of only 92 minutes per year, according to a 2008 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study. On the other end of the spectrum, utilities in New York Pennsylvania and New Jersey averaged 214 minutes of total interruptions each year. These figures don't include power outages blamed on tornadoes or other disasters.
But compare the U.S. data to Japan which averages only four minutes of total interrupted service each year."
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/inn...rid/index.htmlIn those states, the power is out an average of only 92 minutes per year, according to a 2008 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study. On the other end of the spectrum, utilities in New York Pennsylvania and New Jersey averaged 214 minutes of total interruptions each year. These figures don't include power outages blamed on tornadoes or other disasters.
But compare the U.S. data to Japan which averages only four minutes of total interrupted service each year."
So, perhaps the problem is not whether the lines are buried, but how strong the lines are that are strung in the air, whether the trees are maintained, and the kinds of poles? There are no wooden poles here. They would not last. The entire US grid needs to be reconstructed because the outages cause so much trouble and are so expensive.
Perhaps rather than burying the lines at ten times the cost, they need to replace all wooden poles and the lines in the air and spend double or triple so that the above ground lines would be more resilient?
We dont have ice storms like in the northeast US, but the winter weather in 4/5ths of Japan is really nasty at times.
I have been in hurricanes in New Jersey and Connecticut, and believe me, the typhoons in Japan are much much worse, and some years, they happen every week in the fall, so we are not even comparing similar storm strength and frequency. imagine something like a cat 2 hurricane tracking up right offshore from Florida to New England four or five times a year. That is essentially what happens in Japan in many years. A cat 3, 4, or even 5 typhoon hits Kyushu and then follows Shikoku and Honshu for 1,000 miles, passing over 100 million people before finally going out to sea. And yet we lose power at 1/50th the rate of the US northeast. (The cat 5 was bad and knocked over a lot of the high tension lines, so in that case some people did not have electricity for three weeks, but that happens rarely.)
We were paying around 20 cents per kWh before Fukushima. So the cost is not that much more. And actually, my appliances use 1/2 to 1/3 the electricity of appliances in the US, so from that point of view, I am paying 20 cents per kWh but using half the electricity for the same service. so in effect paying at 10 cents a kwh. With no storm outage in more than 20 years. My electric bill is $50 when I am not using heating or cooling, $70 a month in the summer with air conditioning set to 70F 24 hours a day when it is 90F outside, and $100 dollars in the winter with the air conditioner set to heating and keeping the apartment at 70F 24 hours a day when it is 40F during the day and 30F at night.
My guess is that the utilities in the northeast put up the cheapest lines they can get away with and then just deal with the outages when they happen, in effect externalizing the problems to the customers.
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