If we can build skyscrapers and highrises that can withstand hurricane Ian, why can’t we build our electric infrastructure to withstand?
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Why are so many people without power after every hurricane? Surely we should have enough experience in building hurricane proof power lines, utility poles etc? Or lay them underground?
We theoretically could. But there are millions of miles of power lines. It’s just not economical to make them all hurricane proof.
Cost. We could absolutely build infrastructure that could withstand the hurricane, but no one wants to see their taxes or utility bills go up to pay for it.
I live in Houston, where the flooding from Harvey was devastating due to our lack of drainage. The city worked to develop a plan on how to expand the runoff pathways so flooding like that never happens again. To date, we have made **no** progress because it will cost billions and no one wants to fork over the cash.
The electrical infrastructure is actually pretty resilient. The problem are the trees and flying debris around that damage it. And basically replacing the fallen poles and wires aren’t actually a huge cost in the grand scheme of hurricane recovery. Trying to harden this kind of infrastructure gets very expensive and rather inconvenient both for the utilities as well as the consumers.
Bottom line is whether the costs incurred can be recovered.
Estimates to fully replace and fix every problem in the US electrical grid comes to around 5 trillion dollars. Even the massive US defense budget was only around 700 billion US dollars in 2020. In other words, if we’re to to stop spending money on the military for a single year we would have less than 15% of the funds we would need.
And that’s just to replace the system we currently have. To fully disaster proof it would be an astronomical figure.
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