Once again with the electrical infrastructure

Look, I get that a complete hardening of the electrical infrastructure against hurricanes would be very expensive, probably more than it would be worth in savings. We don't have enough hurricanes around here to make it worthwhile, as it was in Florida, though we are in the midst of a period of greater tropical storm activity. But what I don't understand is why this has to be an all-or-nothing proposition, and why we can't talk about what the full range of options is.

After Ike struck Sept. 13, more than 2 million of CenterPoint Energy's 2.25 million customers were without power. An additional 705,400 Entergy customers lost electricity. These included hospitals, nursing homes and schools. Power outages closed most of the Houston Independent School District's 265 campuses for a week or more.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, state utility regulators and other officials have said the cost of strengthening the power distribution system along the Gulf Coast would outweigh the benefits. Why? Because the likelihood of a hurricane like Ike doing damage to a Texas power system is less than in Florida.

"Florida, they have water on both sides of the state, and their likelihood is greater to have storms in the future and for them to completely cross the state," said Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, chairman of the Senate committee that oversees Texas electric utilities.

[Florida Public Utility Commissioner Lisa Polak] Edgar agreed that her state's geographic vulnerability was a factor. Florida had been hit by eight hurricanes in 2004 and 2005, she said, and "the public perception was we were going to have many, many more."

University of Houston economist Barton Smith said unless a Hurricane Ike hit Houston every four or five years, the cost of hardening the electrical grid would be excessive, especially if hardening meant retrofitting the city with underground lines.

"The benefits wouldn't come close to the costs," Smith said.

Given that the vast bulk of the economic cost of Hurricane Ike came from the forced shutdown of businesses due to the power outages, might it not make sense to pick and choose a few places to see about the feasibility of burying power lines? Say, places like the Medical Center, Greenway Plaza, Greenspoint, and the Energy Corridor out in Westchase. Seems to me that would get your biggest bang for the buck, and it something that the business districts and nearby residential associations can decide for themselves.

I'm sure it's more complicated than this, and there will be other considerations, like the politics of focusing on some areas over others. Maybe it's simply not doable. All I'm saying is let's have that conversation rather than simply be told "we can't do that". I don't think that's too much to ask.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on October 05, 2008 to Hurricane Katrina