re: I see the same thing after every hurricane that hits BR

Reminds me of the VA story that broke a year or so ago where they were spending 100s of thousands renting hospital beds because they couldn't afford to buy them outright, but the costs over time of renting made the purchase price of beds seem laughable.

Eventually it will happen...or not.

I dont see the reason to invest in some different long term solution like different poles or underground in a state that can't attract new money for the life of them. Might as well keep buying the same poles and duct tape. I dont see where the money is? Do you?

That's a good point....most of what we see at the consumer level is snapped poles and busted transformers. I'd imagine that the lines can be re-used most of the time.

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This is what people don't understand....directional drilling is an art when it comes to pipelining and it ain't cheap.....when you start basically pipelining electrical lines in Louisiana the amount of directional drilling costs become staggering.

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It's hard enough to do on big money large diameter projects- I don't know how the little machines doing fiber pulls in towns make the economics work.

Power would be many more, larger diameter bores, for a product with much smaller margins than data.

You'd have to do separate drills for every service drop in some places.
to every service drop

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Though I will say that’s cheaper (and more beneficial) for the US than a couple of decades of fighting in the Middle East.

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Can’t sell guns and blackhawks to power lines.

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I don't know how the little machines doing fiber pulls in towns make the economics work.

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I've always figured that the money those towns have to put out up front is astronomical. I figure that's a big reason why smaller communities with small tax bases simply can't do it.

The newer neighborhood attached to my neighborhood has underground lines and they never lose power. My power goes out 1-5 times yearly for winds or rain.

I think the better, cheaper, easier solution is to restrict trees from being a certain distance to all utility lines and poles. I mean it sucks losing trees, I get it—but Mother Nature gonna do her thing.

Bad thing is the trees do help block a lot of that wind—and places without them are still without power also.

That's interesting....my power is above ground and we've had plenty of thunderstorms where we get 30-40mph winds and gully washers of about 3in rain/hr and my power never flinches.....now it flinched for a good while during Laura and Delta but we had 80mph+ winds for both of those.

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The logistical and technical headaches of burying distribution lines in the state of Louisiana bears a cost that I don't think anyone is willing to even discuss.

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Like that time Baton Rouge had to overhaul the sewer lines costing billions of dollars.
Something had to be done. Unfortunately power outages and reliability doesn't get the same focus as shite coming up peoples toilets does.

Entergy simply doesn't do it b/c they Don't HAVE to. They aren't profit driven they aren't punished for this catastrophic failure in infrastructure. They aren't even summoned to Senate Hearings.
Entergy should have started undergrounding EVERYTHING they repaired and every NEW line since 19 fricking 99.


Other countries(obviously Germany and the Netherlands lead the way) are taking undergrounding seriously. In fact parts of the US are as well.

The bullshite "it's cost prohibitive" excuse can kick rocks with Entergry.

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Above-ground lines cost around $10 per foot and underground lines cost in the range of $20 to $40 per foot. In highly urbanized areas, the cost of underground transmission can be 10–14 times as expensive as overhead. However, these calculations may neglect the cost of power interruptions.

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Quick google search. Let’s say it’s $20 per foot. How many feet are in an average neighborhood. A lot. The cost would skyrocket very quickly. That’s not even considering maintenance and repairs.