During the first 27 years of my life I associated power outages with trips to various developing countries. Now I associate it with winter storms. The reason, of course, is that in the Netherlands (where I grew up) power lines are generally buried underground except in the most rural of areas. In the U.S. this is mostly not the case even in some very urban areas like the parts of Washington DC where I live. During the last storm more than 200,000 people lost power, many for several days. Since winter storms tend to go together with short cold days, this is all rather unpleasant and even dangerous, especially for the elderly.
What explains these differences? As far as I understand it, the ex ante cost of burying power lines is about twice as high as hanging them. Maintenance is less frequent but more expensive when it needs to occur on buried lines. The big advantages of burying are the externalities. This suggests that it may be a public-private thing. I.e. private monopolists (or oligopolists) do not internalize the externalities as well. But I don’t know this area well. Perhaps malapportionment leads to an underinvestment in urban infrastructure? Any other hypotheses?
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The US is also a much bigger country than the Netherlands. Perhaps the larger distances changes the economic tradeoff?
I am talking about power lines within urban areas that connect consumers to the grid. Longer distance transmission lines are above ground in the Netherlands too.
It may be due to the date of installation. In the city where I live, newer suburbs have buried lines, while older areas (pre-1970s) do not.
One affluent first-ring suburb here researched burying its lines, and my understanding was that they learned the total price per house would have ended up being between $10000 and $15000. (I think the cost ratio you have is right as a matter of new construction, but the costs of a retrofit apparently are much higher. And of course they are a duplicate cost, since the lines have already been run.)
I’ve always thought that burying power lines was an issue that some clever legislators might get behind because the need for it is incredibly dispersed geographically. People in the Midwest lose power due to ice storms, while people in Florida and Texas lose power due to hurricanes, and power lines are responsible for some of the most expensive fires in California history (though these are are caused by more rural lines).
In 2005, following hurricane Michelle, we were without power (in a relatively affluent part of Miami for 3.5 weeks). That same summer we had been without power for a week following Katrina.
Ben: My guess is that if utilities were publicly owned and controlled some clever legislators would get behind this issue for the reasons you mention.
I’ve always had a similar wonder about the US/Europe difference in road quality. (See http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,159579,00.html which describes without explaining). It seems like the same puzzle.
Anecdotally, I have more electronic gizmos plugged in all the time than my otherwise similar (age, SES) French acquaintances, so if anything I expect Americans to be more sensitive to power outages than Europeans, but that obviously hasn’t translated into any sort of political movement.
Power is publically owned in Nebraska and in Lincoln, the above-ground power lines are on their way out.
I think it comes down to traditions of civic engineering and its uses by the state. Frank Dobbin’s book on Railway policy in the US, UK, and France might hold some clues:
http://www.amazon.com/Forging-Industrial-Policy-Britain-Railway/dp/052162990X/
I just don’t see a commitment to those types of public work programs in the US – nor to give engineers the power to define higher quality standards for power grids, roads, etc.
Other than the rare case of power outages (the fires is more interesting) what are the costs to above ground? I guess they are ugly and may need other types of repair more often, but aren’t outages realy about falling tress that could, with less cost than burrying them, be included in the maintenance budget?
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