Commonwealth Edison wants $2.6 billion to upgrade the electricity system with “smart grid” technology. Wouldn’t it be smart to use some of that money to start burying the utility’s overhead power lines?
That is, put them out of the reach of the kind of storm that plastered Chicago and the suburbs Tuesday night, knocking out power to 440,000 ComEd customers?
We think we know the answer we’d get from the tens of thousands of people who just spent a second night in the dark.
ComEd says it would cost billions of dollars to put the power lines out of harm’s way. A statewide initiative in Florida to retrofit overhead wires has led to higher electricity rates there.
And the company argues that underground maintenance can be expensive. Buried cables don’t fail as often as overhead cables do, but they do fail. They get flooded, they corrode, they get damaged by construction workers who accidentally dig into them. Reaching those buried lines for maintenance and repairs is difficult and time-consuming.
Yes, but underground lines are practically impervious to wind, rain and snow. They certainly make neighborhoods look much prettier. For starters, nobody’s out there butchering your trees on behalf of ComEd to clear a path for the power lines.
ComEd already maintains 29,000 miles of underground cable in the region. State law has long required that power lines be buried in new subdivisions, and some municipalities pay ComEd to put their lines underground. But the utility still has 34,000 miles of overhead lines. Talk about a shovel-ready project.
We’ve said good things about smart grid, ComEd’s signature lobbying initiative this year. The legislation on Gov. Pat Quinn’s desk would help with power reliability and the speed of repairs. The improvements in the bill would let ComEd more accurately identify trouble spots and speed repair crews to where they’re needed. Two-way digital technology would enable the utility to isolate damaged lines and reroute power around the faults to customers that would otherwise go dark. New meters installed in every home would report outages automatically, eliminating the need to phone the utility—and listen to a recorded message promise that your power will be back some day next whenever.
But the smart-grid legislation includes almost $1 billion to replace aged and obsolete underground cable—and nothing to bury overhead cable.
Quinn has promised to veto the smart-grid bill, so it’s in for some changes if it’s ever going to become law. Let’s start digging.
