Storms show power lines still in the dark ages

Nov 7 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Anthony R. Wood The Philadelphia Inquirer

As she gratefully watched Peco repairmen restore the transmission lines that had been out of commission for three weeks, Catherine Poole was sure that, one day soon, nature again would knock the lights out in her rural Chester County neighborhood.

She was correct.

That was in June 2010. Fourteen months later, she lost electricity for three days, courtesy of the remnants of Irene. Then she lost it for three more days with the surreal, prewinter storm of late October, which knocked out power to more than 300,000 in Southeastern Pennsylvania, 500,000 in New Jersey, and millions throughout the Northeast.

After that June storm, Poole said, she and her Glenmoore neighbors had a question for the workmen: "Why are you putting up the same thing that came down so easily?"

The short answer, according to industry experts: They had no choice.

For all the quantum advances in technology in the last 50 years, Peco Energy Co. and the nation's other utilities still rely on unsightly cables woven often through dangerously breakable tree limbs and strung atop aging wooden poles.

"If someone had something that was simple and not as intrusive, you would probably have seen it quite some time ago," said Jim Owens of the Edison Electric Group, an industry association in Washington.

It is an infrastructure with roots in the mid-19th century and it looks to survive well into the 21st.

And, experts warn, it will remain vulnerable to storms.

Do not blame Peco, which has a solid national reputation, said John Kelly, executive director of the Perfect Power Institute, an industry group formed after the Northeast blackout of 2003.

This has been a particularly brisk storm period by any measure all across the country. The three storms that knocked out power to Poole and her neighbors are on Peco's top 10 list for total service interruptions in records dating back 55 years. The February 2010 blizzard is right behind at No. 11.

The Philadelphia region, and especially the city's neighboring Pennsylvania counties, has a particular issue: an abundance of storm-vulnerable trees. Peco has an aggressive tree-trimming program, but it has been a source of tension in some neighborhoods.

That tension plays out elsewhere in the nation, Kelly said. He said he knew of instances in which residents have planted trees deliberately in the path of wires to hide them from view. "Some people are trying to defy the utilities," he said.

"Cities care about aesthetics," Kelly said, "and they don't want these power lines in the air anymore."

So far, experts say, no one has come up with a cost-effective way to transmit power wirelessly. Kelly said a logical solution would be to bury power lines, as some subdivision developers and individual property owners have done, but that remaking the existing power infrastructure would be an expensive and time-consuming project.

"That would be a huge undertaking," said Brett Brune of the trade publication Smart Grid Today.

In the 1990s, Swarthmore considered it but backed off because of the $32 million price tag.

Months after Hurricane Ike cut off power to two million people, Houston also considered burying lines, and also decided it would cost too much. Underground lines are no magic bullet, Owens said. They are expensive to maintain, and high-water tables would pose hazards.

Peco is bringing a few tweaks online. It has strung 12 miles of its 14,000 miles of wiring with tougher, storm-resistant Hendrix cables, spokeswoman Karen Muldoon Geus said. They have been effective, she said, but they cost five times more than conventional cables.

The utility also is considering replacing old wooden poles with fiberglass, which would last about 75 years, compared with 60 for wood. But the new poles cost about four times more.

Said Owens: "There's no simple answer."

Contact staff writer Anthony R. Wood at 610-313-8210 or twood@phillynews.com.