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On 26 Sep 2004 10:57:05 -0400, (Rich Greenberg)
wrote:

In article ,
Amy D wrote:

Hopefully, since Alabama Power has done a fantastic job of getting power
back on after Ivan already they will send people over to help. I was
quite ticked when our power company didn't send anyone over there after
Charley because of a union dispute.........

Are underground utilities common in the FL area? Does that help reduce
the outages when Mother Nature strikes back?

In some areas of GA, all utilities are underground and power outages are
rare in storms. I haven't had an outage of more than a few minutes
since the ice storm in Jan 2000 when I was out a few hours.

Here in east-central Alabama, buried powerlines are common in high-end
subdivisions, but also along downtown streets, on college campuses,
etc. A private homeowner can pay extra to have the lines buried on
his/her property. We did that for the 1/2-mile-long powerline that
supplies our home on 150 acres of rural land. So, we know the recent
power outages caused by Hurricane Frances (24 hours) and Hurricane
Ivan (30 hours) were not due to our own lines being down.

I don't know about Frances, but Ivan brought down a big pine tree over
the main lines that feed all the homes along our county road. Those
supply lines are nearly always above-ground here, even if the
individual household lines are buried. I don't know anything about
voltage/current differences in such lines. Is it easier/more
practical to bury household lines that have already been through a
transformer, versus the main lines?

C. Brunner

But, wouldn't it be different, and perhaps more difficult, b

wrote:

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004 08:44:35 -0500, C. Brunner
wrote:

Is it easier/more
practical to bury household lines that have already been through a
transformer, versus the main lines?

It is considerably less expensive to bury household lines than it is
for high voltage transmission lines!

There's also a HUGE cost if you ever need to upgrade the feed to an
area. They just rewired all the feeds into my area because of
development. There were some areas nearby that did have underground
stuff and when they replaced it it all went above.
--

-Bill

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