Small municipal power and light companies in Massachusetts — called “munis’’ — often shine brightest on stormy nights when high winds and heavy snow send tree branches crashing down on overhead electrical wires. During the run of bad storms in recent years, customers of NStar, National Grid, and other investor-owned utilities sat in the dark while muni customers watched TV and made hot chocolate in the microwave.
The state’s 41 munis love to get under the skin of big power companies by emphasizing the local knowledge of their linemen and the ability of managers to concentrate on customers absent the gaze of outside shareholders. There’s something to it. But a better answer might be found simply by looking up.
Comments
Unfortunately what Mr Harmon fails to mention is that spacer cable generally is not used in areas that aren't heavily treed because without trees it is very visible and the public complains that it is ugly. Fred G
All elecric cable is ugly, so the aesthetic ideal is to go below ground. However, when ugly competes with powerless ugly usually wins.
Good article, Lawrence. With the weather due to get much worse due to global warming, the electric grid is vulnerable and problematic. Electrical outages are often long and disruptive, and will only get more so. There needs to be a long term concerted effort to improve grid resilience, and spacer cable sounds like one of the solutions. The other is potentially putting community cabling underground, which Concord, MA has been doing as a long term project. If I remember correctly (per the Globe article) it is now 50% complete over the last 10 years.
Thank you Mr. Harmon. Very informative and interesting. I'd love to see a follow-up column on the costs and benefits of putting and maintaining utility lines underground. Sure would look nicer!
Because last year's storm did lots of pruning, I expected this years storms would cause fewer power outages. Unless the publicly traded power companies take on a preventative maintenance schedule like the Munis, three to five years from now (after some tree growth) we'll be back to regular extended power outages.
Tom May makes $50 million dollar$ a year. DPU should require all wires and poles to have spacer cables by 2020. The most effective way to end this nonsense is to require all new lines to be put UNDERGROUND and require the companies to put 10% of all lines underground each year. $$ These companies have it to pay their 1% percenters but can't deliver the product. MAYBE IT IS TIME TO FEDERALIZE THESE UTILITIES!
In Europe, most cables are underground, and power outages are rare events. Here, power outages come with every storm. Why can't we do the reasonable, and put cables underground? Lobbyists.
Spacer cables are a band aid - not the cure.
Alexa Fleckenstein M.D.