Benefits, Costs of Pushing Power Lines Underground Debated

Aug 30 - The Miami Herald

As food rotted in South Florida refrigerators, mold-triggering humidity seeped into homes and more than 380,000 FPL customers in Miami-Dade and Broward counties wilted from a fourth day without power, Gov. Jeb Bush said it may be time to take a serious look at burying power lines, shielding them from the fury of future storms.

"I do think we ought to find ways to offer significant incentives for putting lines underground," the governor said Sunday at the state Emergency Operations Centers.

"Putting lines underground has an enormous cost attached to it, but the cost of refurbishing these lines that are above ground . . . is paid for by the ratepayers," he added.

With every storm that leaves residents in the dark, Florida Power & Light must answer the question: Why doesn't it bury its power lines? And, every time, company officials respond that the answer is expensive and not as easy as it sounds.

FPL reports that 41 percent of its customers in Miami-Dade have buried lines, compared to 57 percent in Broward. To bury the rest in older, established neighborhoods would cost five to 10 times the cost of burying them in new developments, said Karen Vissepo, an FPL spokeswoman.

There is also a downside to buried lines, she said. They are harder to repair, sometimes requiring days, rather than hours, to diagnose a problem, and the system is vulnerable to flooding.

FPL said that while the company works with neighborhoods that ask to pay the cost of converting their above-ground lines to below-ground systems, the company does not want to spread those costs to consumers who don't benefit from the switch.

Another downside: If a distribution line or transmission line is above ground and is damaged by trees, wind or debris, service will be cut to homes even if their lines are buried underground.

Bush argued that there is a cost to repeated repairs, as well. After the hurricanes of 2004, FPL depleted its storm reserve to pay for repairs. Early this year, it received approval from the Florida Public Service Commission to impose a $1.68 surcharge per customer per month to replenish its costs.

The Florida Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities, has acknowledged that exposed power lines are a problem in Florida but the cost of burying the lines would be hefty -- as much as $146 billion over 10 years.

The companies could save money by burying just the lower-voltage distribution lines, at a cost of $96 billion, but if the transmission lines remain vulnerable to windstorms and debris, customers could still lose power, the PSC noted.

Of the 14,566 transmission lines in the state -- which carry the high-voltage currents -- only 183 of them are underground.

PSC Chairman Braulio Baez said that even if utility companies were able to combine the cost of restoring their downed lines after 10 hurricanes it would likely "still be under the cost of burying them underground."

He added that while the PSC has reviewed the issue, it continues to require that the overhead system be the standard when utility companies seek approval for new lines. Most new developments, however, almost always bury their power lines because of local zoning rules.

"The older, established neighborhoods are the problem," Baez said.

State Sen. Ron Klein thinks it's time to find out what the exact costs will be. The Delray Beach Democrat sponsored a bill last year that would have established a task force to look at the cost of storm-proofing Florida's electric system. The bill died in the final days of the legislative session, but he expects it to get renewed attention this year, given the experience of Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

"The question is, are we doing everything we can to have a grid that can be sustained and maintained during the climatic periods of a hurricane?" he said Sunday. "If the storm is a Category 4 or 5, all bets are off. But if it's a Category 1, the system should be operating. We should not be having these massive outages."

-----

To see more of The Miami Herald -- including its homes, jobs, cars and other classified listings -- or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.herald.com .

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

FPL,