Trees

Have you seen all the trees down?

Lots of people live in the woods.

Yes and I’m surprised we have any trees left after the storm we had last month 😂

And a power grid from the 1950s that is above ground.

I was looking this type of comment

Cuz this state sucks dick 🧐

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Trees. Maine is cutting their trees year round around power lines. NH does not do they. The only time I’ve seen them cut a tree was when it is already in someone’s yard/ middle of the road.

We at least partially have the deregulated environment to thank for that. Eversource invests the absolute minimum required to keep their equipment operational. If you look at the other utilities in this state, like NH Power Co-op, they literally cut trees down within 10ft of the lines down to the ground, while Eversource only trims branches 6ft around the lines themselves.

Why does Vermont seem to not lose power so frequently?

I can't speak for providers other than mine, but Unitil in at least the seacoast has crews (usually Asplundh) cutting trees back constantly - I see them or the results of their work all the time. They called 3 weeks ago asking to trim my trees away from the power lines, and it's a small apple tree.

The town and/or homeowners/landowners have to allow the utilities to do tree trimming work. Can't fault them if they are asked and told no. The large storm in December was the first time we've lost power here for any length of time since the last huge ice storm in 2012 I believe it was.

Half as many people.

When lines go down, that stops power from getting to homes.

Tons of trees and old ass circuits

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Our wires are above ground and branches drop onto wires. We can't realistically bury the majority of the electrical infrastructure because the ground freezes in the winter and if a break occurs below ground you may not be able to access it until the spring thaw.

The trees aren't trimmed well because the power companies put the bare minimum into maintenance and people bitch and cry when they see tree trimmers out in the summer.

The Co-op was always trimming trees when I lived in an area serviced by them. Rarely lost power. Now I live in Eversource land. Been lucky so far but I never see them trimming trees.

If I had to take a risky, wild guess with a gun to my head, I would say it’s partially snow packed trees coming down and partially a shitty, outdated grid.

Sounds like this may be the likely culprit

Maine Alaska and New Hampshire have the 3 worst infrastructures of all the states

Great infrastructure compared to the other New England states

You’re correct

We used to lose power many times every winter. About ten years ago, my town made a concerted effort to trim or remove trees and branches near power lines; we've since had maybe 20% as many outages as before.

Our power company maintains their power lines instead of waiting for disasters.

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While penny-pinching utilities who don't want to spend money on maintenance are much of the problem, we residents have to take some of the blame - any time there's tree-trimming around lines people complain bitterly about it.

There was a court case 25+ years ago when a guy - I believe it was one of the founders of Sanders Associates but I might be remembering that wrong - chased away a tree crew with a chainsaw because he didn't want them cutting trees along the road in front of his property.

It seems to be concentrated in the South, where most people live, which makes sense. Fewer power line to lose up north.

Anyone have stats on which providers have the most outages over the years? When I lived in NH Co Op land we rarely lost power. They trim branches year round. Only in major outages. Now I live in Eversource land. We’ve been lucky but I rarely see them trimming branches.

PSNH was even worse than the current Eversource. They only sent out cutting crews after irate citizens lit up their elected officials.

I don’t know about other towns but mine had labeled some roads “historic scenic”. Most of the road has to be lined with trees. Setback before you can have open space is significant. Blah blah blah. The utility does come through to trim, but they send out notices before hand that you have to respond to: yes I’m ok with you trimming trees on my property line, and whether you want the trimmed branches or they can dispose of them.

A lot of people either ignore or forget to send those back, or want that scenery!

So. Lines come down.

Also, got to remember we are a lot more forested than we were 70-80 years ago. My dad used to watch the fireworks in Nashua from the top of the ridge on the family property in north Hollis in the 50s. A lot of what you see lining the roads is new growth and it’s all pine. Those keep their needles in winter so a lot more real estate for wet snow and ice too cling to and bring those limbs down.

I think you’ll find areas where there is still field lining the roads have a lot less downed lines.

Trees. Our last outage was the ice storm of 2011. It's been fine since then when they upgraded the grid. We are near a main road and we have underground wiring. That's a good combination for avoiding power outages.

Granite state. There’s a lot of boulders lining those roads. And stone walls that come right up to the road. Those are historic you can’t touch so….

Isn’t vt still a lot more open space with farms compared to nh?

Absolutely, and the fact that much of the ground is bedrock or extremely rocky so it's hard to dig and lay cables in.

>chased away a tree crew with a chainsaw because he didn't want them cutting trees along the road in front of his property.

Those were rhododendrons and it was the road agent who got chased, but yes.

Trees

It’s a bit of both. Nhs power grid is very old and very cheaply made, add to that power companies that don’t cut back trees and brush as often as they should and you get a power grid that goes out often during storms

The power company doesn't own the trees. They need permission to trim. If someone doesn't let them trim the tree they can't. The tree on your property is yours. So, When your power is out, blame your neighbor who's tree fell on the line. The only way to eliminate it would be to cut down every tree within 100' of a powerline. And that isn't going to happen with the environmentalist.

As far as the underground thing goes, it's the granite state. It would be so ridiculously expensive to put everything underground that it isn't going to happen. Also, when underground does go bad, and believe me, it does, finding and fixing the problem is its own special nightmare

After losing power for 20 hours recently, I decided to get a generator to power the whole house. Bought a portable one and installed a 50 amp inlet going into my breaker box myself, with interlock to prevent backfeed. $1500 total.

Texas would like a word...

Yeah, that ice storm pissed off enough people to light up their representatives and utilities to actually do a lot of tree trimming. I'm guessing it's been long enough since then that they've slacked off again.

This is the way.

you know those power lines that NH keeps preventing hydro quebec from sending more power down south?

sure would be handy to have that power in the even of losing part of the grid!

I’d also say this: I’m dating myself here. I remember when we got cable in the 80s. I’m pretty sure some of the town has that underground but a lot don’t. Same with fiber optic that tds put in a decade ago.

I’m not a fan of losing power. When er have a major event my road is often 5 days without. We got it back briefly yesterday for 40 minutes. When our first kid was born my parents gave us a generator for Christmas so we could keep the house warm when we lose power. It is what it is.

Thanks - I knew I was getting details wrong.

Chasing off the road agent! That isn't messing around.

Trees

The problem isn't supply. It's local lines being downed by trees. The project you are talking about wouldn't help.

I live in a city and very rarely lose power. If you live in the boonies, buy a generator.

Do you look outside at all? The roads are narrow and there are a shit ton of trees lining all the roads. Heavy snow and ice = power outages.

These are all ratings you can look up 🤷🏻‍♀️

Most new developments are getting the lines buried, at least what I've seen. It's all the old lines are is simply not getting buried, too much work.

That's hilarious. How the heck were rhododendrons even causing a problem unless they were encroaching the road, that's insane.

I lived in NH for 20ish years, lost power constantly. Lived in the metro Boston area for 10+ never lost power even once. We bought a house a few years ago back in NH, lost power within 2 days of moving here.

It’s an old grid and it’s all above ground. When it’s windy or snowy or super rainy, that screws with the power line. Whereas in Boston all of them are buried so it’s really rare.

Instead, Boston gets manhole fires and electrified metal plates on the road and side walks. Killed a couple dogs if I remember right.

Depends on many factors. If your area is powered by one set of lines, you lose that, you're out. In a more dense area, there's more lines, less chance of a single break causing a significant outage. If you're well away from civilization, you're also likely to be low on the list for restoration.

Look at the delivery fees on your electric bill right now and tell me you seriously want them to rebuild the entire infrastructure underground. Most of the state wouldn't be able to afford what would happen to that delivery fee.

And then people complained about the trees being cut "too far back".

Until some masshole drives up and steals it.

Might help if an ice storm hit part of the state and destroyed those types of lines. I watched a line of electric towers fall during the big ice storm. Made a bizarre green glow as the whole line collapsed. They had to evacuate Montréal because they lost two of the three major supply lines going to it. Everyone there has electric heat. No power, everyone freezes.

But yea, generally it's the local circuits. One part gets cut, they all go out. Like old fashioned Christmas lights.

That would be an entertaining attempt...

That’s actually not true. Eversource has cut several trees down in my yard and reassess every year

Target practice? I remember during one of the larger storms, friends of mine that live in areas that were blacked out for a while were seeing vehicles with MA plates moving slowly past houses. One even stopped at one of their houses, was peeking through the windows. Left after the home owner walked over and revealed the pistol on his hip. NH really needs to build a wall on our southern border.

That’s the NH way!

Fewer trees along roads. More agricultural fields in rural areas. Fewer chances for issues. Also "seems" might not be correct.

It’s hard to cut down trees as aggressively as some would suggest. Lots of people get pretty upset when it’s a tree on their own property.

I agree that people can get irrationally upset about Eversource cutting trees in their own property. However, they have massively improved in maintenance. In the 80’s and 90’s the outrages were so much worse in my experience

What pisses me off is not losing power during the storm, but losing it two or 3 days after the storm when there are clear skies and no wind. Happens a lot where I live, and it makes no sense.

Put the damn lines underground!

From what I know their policy is to do it and ask for forgiveness later. My mother in law lives in Rumney and had a bunch of trees on her property abutting the road cut down without her input.

I'm not saying it's the right thing to do, but at some point we have to ask ourselves what trade-offs we need to make to keep our power infrastructure more reliable, especially with the push towards everything being electric. Underground service would be great, but it's not feasible in most of the state, and I'd assume prohibitively expensive.

Most forested state in the nation, or 1% point behind Maine

This could be region specific. I’ve never seen them cutting trees proactively before a storm or before the trees even fall. I’ve only seen them after the fact

thats what anti-techonologists ALWAY whine.

after fighting the electric grid companies tooth and nail for a decade, then you all turn around and whine that your power keeps going out.

if the grid company is not making money, it is going to spend bupkiss keeping the local distribution lines free and clear!

you can not have it both ways

Yes, they cut lots of tree in Hollis

True!

Oddly enough most new construction uses underground conduit for utility wires. I guess the bedrock is only a problem on the roads.

Lol. It’s local delivery that gets broken during storms, not the supply system.

You are the first person that has ever described me as an "anti-technologist". I work at one of the largest tech companies in the world, remotely over the internet, seated in front of a 55 inch QD-OLED that I use as a monitor. I bought 3 new tvs in the last year and have built a new computer at least every 2 years for the last 20. Knowing how the grid works isn't "anti-technologist". The idea that power companies aren't making money, or that the "northern pass" is the only way to fix that, comes from a hopelessly simplistic view of energy policy that is driven entirely by industry propaganda that says "if only you'd give us everything we want everything would be so much better". You're a mark.

> Look at the delivery fees on your electric bill right now and tell me you seriously want them to rebuild the entire infrastructure underground.

Yes please. I'll take a slightly higher light bill and power that rarely ever goes out over a slightly lower one and I lose power a few times a year.

Wouldn't be slightly higher. Especially in areas where they encounter rock and need to either drill, blast, or both. A lot of people are struggling with utility costs as it is.

What they should do is build the line from Québec to lower electric costs, then maybe use some of the savings to do infrastructure work.

Part of the improvement is smarter switches. It used to be that if the power went out due to a tree/branch on a line you had to wait for a crew to come out and fix it. Now in many cases, switches automatically reroute power via other lines and you get back on quickly.

My power flickered off for a few seconds at least 10 times, probably more, on Monday. Annoying because it reset the internet router each time, but way better than losing power for hours at a time.

Yeah, because most construction isn't taking place on bedrock.

Running them underground from the pole to a building makes sense. Running them underground everywhere in the terrain we have in this state doesn't.

My parents have co-op, and the co-op trims trees constantly.

My parents also lose power constantly, for hours at a time, because the co-op only does last mile and relies on eversource upstream.

Squirrels. I've lost it a few times due to them. They'll get up on the lines and jump to the transformers and, well...

Also, in the terrain we have putting them underground is expensive as all hell and can only be done 6 months out of the year.

And what Reddit doesn't realize is that if you bury lines, when you have to cross 93 in the whites, it takes significantly more cable, even cost of drilling aside. Much easier to put two tall poles up and run a "straight" line across a valley then go down and back up.

telephone line was jus hit in ossipee

On the question of VT vs NH on power outages. Green Mountain power is better than Eversource on the whole. VT has better maintenance of its grid. NH had lots of suburban development but is still very forested. VT is more agricultural. People in NH prefer to manage there forests with a light touch. This leads to more natural selection and dead and dying trees that love to find power lines to fall onto.

I would ask if you are on more NH centric groups (Facebook, reddit, etc) and thus see more posts about it vs posts on VT centric groups. I have family and coworkers on both sides of the river Connecticut, and it's pretty even with power loss from what I hear.

I live on one of those roads. The trees are all massive old oaks and within feet of the power lines. Surprisingly, I've only lost power once in the 8 years I've lived on this road. My theory is that since it's all woods and no open area, the wind isn't as strong and mostly goes over the tops of the trees. I used to live a town over on the edge of a field and the wind coming off the field was intense and we'd see pines knocked down all the time

They're planted right on the side of the road and the house is on a sharp curve. The current resident isn't any more reasonable and has filled his yard with a whole bunch of junk.

Trees, lots of trees.

Just got the text that we should be expecting the same for tomorrow. Yay.

LMAO of course my power went out as soon as I posted this. 4th surge today. 🤣🤣

I see them cutting trees year round.

It's a state full of bigass bull pines and we get a shit load of snow.....dare I say it's not an issue with the grid lol

This is the true answer. Me and my neighbors have asked eversource in NH multiple times to take care of some trees that are mixed in with the lines along our road and they always say no. The storm we got on Christmas took 2 down in front of my neighbors house and took the pole with it.

When they came to repair it the lineman asked the super from Eversource why all the trees on our road haven’t been pruned or removed and he couldn’t give a good reason other then they didn’t think it was worth the expense.

I just got power back on in hamsptead now at 15:10

You think a billion dollars is pocket change?

Trees.

Adapt.

Because no one trims their own trees, trees are allowed to grow tangled into the lines, old trees don’t get taken down till they fall down… live free or die!

It’s both. If you look at the power grid from a high level, power lines are just the edges of the power grid, connecting producer and consumer nodes. We have an unreliable power grid because we have so many lines going all through the hinterlands, and so little redundancy. But you can’t have redundancy without density.

IMO this 20th century model is fundamentally unsustainable without massive government subsidies. It’s not Eversource’s fault. They’re never going to be able to trim enough trees on such sprawling infrastructure.

If you want grid electricity, live in town. If you want to live on an acre plot, get solar panels. If your home can’t support sewer lines, it probably shouldn’t support electrical lines either. On that note, we really need to bury more of the transmission lines connecting towns and cities, too.

It’s going to be a tough couple of decades as entitled exurban Americans slowly begin to realize that their lifestyle depends on massive government handouts and is completely unsustainable long term. A lot of them will attribute it to “live in pod eat bugs” conspiracy nonsense, but it’s just a regression to historical norms.

We only built houses in this soulless sprawl for one human worth of time. We lived in towns and villages for thousands of years, and in tribes before that. This current built environment is anti-human. We were never meant to live like this. Car addiction has been more devastating to communities than drug addiction.

Very astute observation I have solar slated for install in the summer I'm only on little more than acre but if I can have some more sustainable utilities that keep me semi grid resistant I will do it. I've been looking into whatever option I can to reduce my bills lol

I can’t remember the last time I’ve lost power. Definitely been a couple years. I live just outside of Concord

Mind you, it doesn’t necessarily have to be rooftop solar either. A subdivision could pool resources together and do community solar or wind, too. At any rate, the future of the electric grid is more decentralization.

We are the second most forested state, second only to Maine but with a much higher population density in our forested areas. The emerald ash borer is wiping out our ash trees for a few years now, and they are coming crashing down. Tree crews can't keep up with it.

I don't disagree with the latter half of that, the line from QBC would be great. But it doesn't have to be a massive increase- a small increase, say 1c/kwh, and then use the proceeds to begin burying everything- start from the outside (rural areas will be easier to do this in and can be done with smaller impact to people trying to get around) and work your way into the cities. 1c/kwh across the entire state will not have a massive effect on each individual's bills, I'm a rather heavy user at 2800KWH and my bill would increase $28, but across the entire state, that adds up quickly.

Not to mention there are federal incentives for burying power lines (because the rest of the country has more or less figured out that burying them vastly improves resiliency against weather) to help offset the cost.

Last I saw it cost around $11500/mi to bury lines- not cheap by any means, but it could be covered in <10 years by a 1c/kwh increase statewide. Additionally, most new construction already has buried lines, no reason not to make that the standard.

NH is 82% forested. Powerlines run everywhere. It would be extremely expensive & invasive to cut any tree that has the reach to fall on a line.

Rural maybe, if it doesn't interfere with their ability to upgrade the lines as the population grows. Cities.. that may be a hard sell. Doubt a lot of people would want their yards ripped up just to get the electricity that they already get.

That's all assuming your analysis is correct, which I'm skeptical of.

Cumulatively compared to the cost of continuing to repair outages and downed lines from storms, plus associated costs of not having power, year after year? Yes

> Doubt a lot of people would want their yards ripped up just to get the electricity that they already get.

I dunno, a simple "Hey we're going to tear it up, put it back as best we can, but at the end of it you'll have power that will never go down due to weather" I bet the vast majority would be on board.

I used to live in Alaska. The power lines are all buried in Alaska. The ground has a ton of rock and frost. Somehow I never lost power while living there.

Doubt it since power outages in the cities are pretty rare. Then how would the street lights work? Have to replace the wood poles with ones with interior wiring? But then the cable/phone/internet and in some cases fire alarm are all hanging on the existing poles. To do it right would be a lot move involved.

> But then the cable/phone/internet and in some cases fire alarm are all hanging on the existing poles.

They solved this problem elsewhere... they buried those too, and is also a great way to defray the costs so it's not 100% on the electric company. Maybe ask ATT/comcast to dip into their portion of the $1,000,000,000,000 (yes, 1 TRILLION DOLLARS) that has been given to internet providers to increase broadband availability that never got used appropriately to cover some of the cost?

Yea, right. They'd just jack our rates even more. Probably end up in court since the utilities won't look kindly on Eversource trying to pass on some of the costs. And it's not the same phone/cable company throughout the state, to complicate things further.

Or.. you know, just leave the wires on the poles and call it done.

Last time I lost power was over 6 years ago and that was due to a summer storm/tree. So as far a frequently, I don’t see that as an issue. When you say frequently, how often are you referring to and is it all storm related issues?

Well ok I'm sure there may be geographical features in some areas that prohibit underground conduit, but for example, my road is pretty much exactly the same region as my house, and all the new-ish (like within the last 30-40 years) houses here have underground connected to the poles on the street. We have a lot of long driveways too. Most of the rest of my town is pretty much the same, except the newer developments and clusters all have underground systems for the whole area. So, in summary, sure they could bury a lot, perhaps almost all of the local distribution systems, they just won't because it doesn't make short term financial sense.

Non union workers that's why..

Trees

Trees

This type of answer over-simplifies the problem. Burying thousands of miles of power lines would not be a cheap endeavor in the best of circumstances (and NH taxpayers are notoriously cheap).

And trying to do this in NH would be even more complicated (/expensive) than in other areas. We do live in the Granite State after all.

Carving out that much Granite would upset the Lizardfolk—and that’s not a problem any of us want.

It’s because if you schedule a call with them to come out and do clearing work they schedule it and the guys work it their regular day making straight time. When it falls down in the storm cause they didn’t do it the week before the storm, the guys go out and do the same shit after it’s already fallen + the repair that’s necessitated by not doing it and make overtime.

There’s a reason.

From my experience here in NH, the towns and utilities are not proactive. They are reactive.

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Because they're vegan

Wait till everyone's charging cars from their homes. O.o Think the lines & old infrastructure will handle it?

Trees

Because Boston has buried utilities. I lived in Toronto for 20 years and didn’t lose power until somebody hit a transformer and then put for a week. Same pile bro

Second most heavily forested state in the country

Lots of trees in NH

As someone else mentioned, if you wanna see your electricity bill skyrocket because of distribution fees, by all means... There's a reason that rural areas (and not just in NH, all over the world) don't bury conduit. It's expensive as hell.

Trees , trees, trees

Until the next storm and then we re hang them. Those will last until the next storm. And so on

Trees! We experienced an 8 day power outage when we lived in Tyngsboro MA and after that National Grid went around trimming a lot of trees and we rarely had any power outages after that. Now we live here in NH in an area with underground utilities and never have power outages. 🤷🏻‍♀️

they literally just raised rates like $.11/kwh

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I've lived in Vermont for my entire life and I've lost power for more than an hour once.

Trees, and with warming we get more wet snow. It used to be more light and fluffy. Now its wet and heavy.

We need some of that wireless electricity. The conspiracy theorists would need more than a ton foil hat to protect themselves, though.

You make it sound like everything falls off the poles every storm. They'll fix it. If it's that much of a problem, get a generator.

NH won’t bury the power lines.

The simple answer: Trees. Wet snow. Branches fall on power lines.

much of the grid is from the 1950s. Many more houses have been built, and larger houses with much larger electrical service and many more appliances.

We never lost electricity in the 60s, 70s, 80s etc like we have since 2008. We lost our power for 9 days when we lived in Barrington in 2008. After that ice storm, Public Service trimmed back lots of trees in the area. They even took down a lot of trees going up our driveway at no charge. We still lost power for 4 days in 2010 and 2011. I’m guessing it’s because there are more people and more drain on the grid. With the increase of the cost recently, you would hope upgrades would be coming

Two factors: sprawl, NH is very sparsely populated, this calls for a lot of lines at risk from trees and it also costs more for the state to operate so inherently lines are in rougher conditions. Mixed use medium density zoning which we see in a lot of other states or Canada has very reliable infrastructure and tax income to upkeep ratios for the city.

Other factor is climate, we are in the sweet spot for snow rain freeze-thaws, this puts ice and weight on trees and lines. Go north more and it's just snow, go south it's just rain.

I vaguely recall seeing information that burying the lines caused access and I THINK some sort of induction issues? Maybe someone out there is fluent in power lines!

Ok, but you started out claiming that it couldn’t be done because of ‘bedrock’, and now your argument is it’s too expensive. I doubt the expense argument too. As noted, new developments are almost all putting utilities underground. It apparently isn’t all that expensive. But yes there is obviously a cost. The offset is drastically reduced maintenance costs. The problem is that it takes a long time for the maintenance offset to balance out the installation expense.

The state is not fiscally responsible for power company infrastructure, so I'm not certain why you are saying "NH won't bury the power lines." Cost estimates to bury lines are between $100,000 and $1,000,000 per mile to bury the lines, dependent on what they have to be dug through. Based on the reported 18,000 miles of residential lines on poles, that would be $1.8 billion dollars to $18 billion dollars to accomplish. Not going to happen.

> I doubt the expense argument too

Seattle buried some power lines in 2007. It cost about $2500 per foot - and the way that article is written, it doesn't necessarily cover the whole cost.

A much cheaper proposition by Hydro Quebec was floated in 2017. And by "much cheaper" I mean it was $4.2 million per mile instead of the $13 million per mile it cost in Seattle.

Generally speaking, burying powerlines costs about 10x as much as running them overhead, and the numbers in that article come out to be just under $4 million per mile.

Even the most recent prices I can find, for PG&E, put a number between $1.5M and $3M per mile with the costs being paid by the people who are served by the electric utility, and the costs being dependent on how much the process is.

The reason that housing developments are putting utilities underground is that burying power cables rated for 200 amps when you already have trenches for water and sewer doesn't add a huge expense over running the cables overhead, since most of the cost, at that point, is the cable. Because for residential installs, the cost per foot is only about $8, unless there's local regulations and rules that make it significantly more expensive, because there's limited capacity in underground conduits and cable vaults.

And again, all of these costs are basic costs. They don't account for the type of terrain we have in NH. The closest we could get would be the cost from Hydro Quebec but even there the soil is much flatter and they weren't going to have to do any horizontal drilling to make it work - That was all using existing infrastructure for buried cable. Horizontal drilling is much harder when you have as much rock in your soil as we do.

Yeah, I used to work with a lot of people who lived in VT. They lost power about as much as we did, which is to say not all that much, except in really rural areas.

And there's also been a ton of people I know from MA who've been without power for several days due to this storm. So it's not unique to NH to lose power in a storm that features heavy snow and high winds.

Except most people know that that would be a complete lie. The powerlines in front of your house are almost never the ones that cause an outage. Outages usually happen upstream when they affect thousands of people.

> Last I saw it cost around $11500/mi to bury lines- not cheap by any means, but it could be covered in <10 years by a 1c/kwh increase statewide. Additionally, most new construction already has buried lines, no reason not to make that the standard.

Where did you see that? Because if it cost $2/foot to bury lines, the power companies would have buried all of them years ago.

The absolute cheapest per mile number I have found recently is $1.5 million to bury lines. Even in 2017, when Hydro Quebec floated the idea of burying 11 miles of lines (that didn't require any horizontal drilling, mind you), it was $4 million per mile

So if you have a way to put high voltage transmission lines in the ground for $2/foot, write Eversource and tell them because they'll be all over that.

I remember after the great ice storm of 2008 when people were without power for weeks and we had crews from all over the northeast come to NH to help and again 2 years later we had multi day state wide outages the reason given against burying the lines is the expense to dig them up to fix . But if they were underground, we wouldn’t have lost power in the first place. The cost / time to access an occasional power line issue in the ground is far less expensive and can be done faster than major wide spread outages and upkeep of old poles.

The question was why does NH lose power? The answer is because the power lines are not underground. The cost associated with fixing an outdated and ineffective infrastructure wasn’t part of the question. Or answer.

Relax.

Pointing out a fault is not a need to relax, it is being grounded in reality. There are more solutions than the one of burying the lines, such as removing trees that encroach on the lines. One is exponentially less expensive than the other. Expense is a factor regardless, since costs will be passed to ratepayers. This isn't a decision in a vacuum. If it wasn't, why not say the solution is to develop wireless power or put a fusion reactor in every home?

I have overhead wires coming to my house. The neighborhood behind me has buried lines. Neither mattered when a transformer blew up down the street and cut off everyone.

I didn’t say the state or tax payers should do anything. I didn’t suggest a solution. I simply responded to the question.

I hope you get a hug today.

100 years ago maybe. Most of our state is a National Forest.

My area (home) lost power for 6 days and the reason was strictly trees falling on lines, blocking roads, etc. About 2 years later, major clearing was done (including on a state road where they cut back exponentially). Larger poles, better wiring was replaced. We barely lost power again. Maybe for an hour during a bad thunderstorm. It can’t cost more than burying. Imagine blasting in the WM?

Edit: words

And would your lifestyle be dramatically different if they raised them .12 instead of .11?

This was in regards to poles and local service, the long distance HV Transmission isn't commonly buried AFAIK.

In 5 years in this particular house we've lost power at least a couple days every winter, it has consistently been local lines down due to trees or weather.

> If it's that much of a problem, get a generator.

What a solution! Instead of everyone paying a few extra dollars on their light bill and improving things for everyone, people should go out and spend $10k+ on a standby generator! Or $1k and only power a few items.

Precisely. Why do I want to pay anything extra for your comfort and convenience? You chose to live someplace where infrastructure is lacking, you weren't forced to live there. Find a solution with your own money, you're not welcome to mine.

Doesn't have to be long distance HV transmission. Even just like 34k or 46k that would serve a neighborhood is going to get costly to bury.

Personally no, but just saying "raise rates $0.01/kwh and bury the lines" is likely a vast oversimplification. Retrofitting buried electric across the state is a monumental task, when you consider the geography combined with a bunch of people who don't want people interfering with their property. Also consider the huge amount of people that were struggling to afford living here, even before the rate hikes.

I read this article from 2009 that makes it seem fairly unpalatable.

>A rough price tag puts the cost at $17 billion or more. To put that in perspective, cleaning up from the ice storm cost the utilities about $80 million, enough to bury about 100 miles of line. It would take the cost of the damage from 90 similar ice storms to pay for burying half of the state's power lines.

>"It does become more economical to hope for the best and clean up the mess," said Seth Wheeler of New Hampshire Electric Co-op.

Ok boomer. How does it feel knowing that you, and people like you, are actively making the world a worse place?