I'm done. Again you provide nothing but going in circles with no supporting data at all. I wish you were my age and had been an opponent when I was a debate team geek in school. You're type of unsubstantiated arguments were eaten for lunch.
Gold Member
Re: Bury the power lines
I'm done. Again you provide nothing but going in circles with no supporting data at all. I wish you were my age and had been an opponent when I was a debate team geek in school. You're type of unsubstantiated arguments were eaten for lunch.
Platinum Member
Re: Bury the power lines
Ultimately what OG&E needs to do is spend a little money to identify the cost/cost savings for groups of customers, and break that cost down between the different types of lines that might need to be buried.
Specifically OG&E needs to break down the cost for the city of Oklahoma City alone, and even Oklahoma City broken down into targeted areas. Then targeted areas need to have meetings etc. to determine if there is a real path forward vis-a-vis cost.
The reality is nothing about OG&E's costs can be priced in "cost per square mile" if we're computing over their entire service area. Costs/cost savings in Downtown OKC and Watonga are going to be quite disparate, so OG&E putting out figures of the cost to bury their entire network is disingenuous at best and socially irresponsible at worst.
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
Teo, that is more or less my point about being so vocal in speaking out against those who are quick to make claims it’s unaffordable and can’t/won’t happen.
Maybe my debate skills need some work or perhaps I simply am not properly articulating my position on this issue. I would be more than thrilled to just see it happen on some major thoroughfares like Shields or Second Street in Edmond.
I’d start off with some pilot projects to try and gauge costs going forward. Work with communities who are willing to pool a little money together sort of like the RTA tax and work on a certain corridor.
Work with neighborhoods and offer certain rebates that are attractive to people.
Edmond has a great opportunity to do this with covell.
Platinum Member
Re: Bury the power lines
Sort of an echo of what others are saying, but I can't stand that the reaction to burying the lines is always ZOMG IT IS TOO EXPENSIVE!
Look OKC needs sidewalks. Building them everywhere is insanely expensive. But the city has focused on where they will do the most good and started there, while simultaneously adding them where major ongoing street work is happening, and also coupling this all with an incentive plan to encourage private homeowners to build sidewalks in front of their property.
Seems pretty obvious that a similar multi-tiered approach could do a lot of good, while leaving the vast majority of the lines unburied. (1) focus on major points of weakness in the system, (2) begin burying lines with new construction, and (3) encourage homeowners to have their own service lines buried perhaps through a cost-sharing initiative of some kind.
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
+1000Originally Posted by DoctorTaco
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
A significant increase in bills will result in diminishing returns. Solar will look a lot better.
Re: Bury the power lines
I was reading a bit into the Boring Company, one of Elon Musk's ventures. They claim to be able to fairly quickly build tunnels at a cost of $10MM per mile. While that's probably not feasible as far as connecting power to residences, if they ran tunnels under all the section lines of the city, that'd be a pretty powerful/safe method to distribute water, sewer, gas, electric and whatever. There'd be plenty of room for everything.
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
there's a pretty wide margin between doing nothing about the problem and burying every line. it would likely be pretty easy to build a map highlighting areas with the greatest need for investment. Start there. I don't think anyone seriously thinks every single line can or needs to be buried. But something is better than nothing. Anything averages better than a 0.
Platinum Member
Re: Bury the power lines
I completely agree. But OG&E likes to talk about it like it is an all or nothign proposition, and they do this, obviously, so they don't have to do anything at all.
Gold Member
Re: Bury the power lines
OG&E talked about burying lines today with the City Council. You can read it here: https://twitter.com/OKC_SPAN/status/...213264899?s=20
VIP Member
Re: Bury the power lines
Looks like they continued to talk about all or nothing.
Platinum Member
Re: Bury the power lines
Soooooo glad Cooper's my councillor (for multiple reasons) and not that complete a**hat and ignorant fool Greiner.
Re: Bury the power lines
I watched the live feed. They actually did talk about starting with burying distribution. But really not much was accomplished in today's meeting. They gave themselves a B rating for storm response and mostly talked about how good they were in response to councilor questions. They mentioned another meeting forthcoming where it sounded like more meat could be covered, hopefully someone can report on that meeting.
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
I think the best bang for the buck would be investing in homeowners to bury the lines from their meter to the main power network. Those small individual jobs add a ton of man-hours for little overall benefit. for example, if it takes a 2 man crew an hour per house, they may only restore service to several homes in a day. Where if those lines are buried but the distribution line on that street has been compromised, that 2 man crew may spend 16 man-hours to restore service to an entire street instead of 10 houses.
That is where the all or nothing estimates are not taking into account. Every line that is buried is one less line for a worker to potential service during an ice storm or high wind event. That frees them up to work in another area. A $200 million investment would likely not even scratch the surface on the entire grid, but it is still fewer potential outages which will directly improve response times in other areas. It's about reducing the footprint required by a finite number of crews. Even a focused approach on one area would allow other areas to receive a more concentrated number of line workers, which would be more efficient and also likely lead to faster service restoration times.
Re: Bury the power lines
Throw all the OGE exec's in the trench when y'all get around to burying them power lines!
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
https://www1.salary.com/OGE-ENERGY-C...-Salaries.html
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
As someone who has built 1000s of miles of power-line this thread is painful
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
What is unique to Oklahoma City that hundreds of other cities don't have?
What is wrong with a phased approach, or a targeted investment in areas that have consistent power outages?
the nearest power line to my house is a half mile away. my neighborhood (built in 1970) has all underground utilities. so do most in my city. why should Oklahomans still be living in 1960's power standards? i have never once worried about losing power. it doesn't even cross my mind.
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
i am on OEC and never even had power flickers during this last ice storm.
Platinum Member
Re: Bury the power lines
I'm at NW 36th/May, lost power for a week because of the ice storm, power flickered dozens of time and lost power for 5-6 hours during the windy day a week or so ago, power flickered a bunch of times last night. Pathetic.
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
yep. no issues through any of those. so my house became the defacto place for all of my friends and their families to come warm up and take showers.
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
I was 15 days for the ice storm, flickered during the cold front last week, and went out for another 3.5 hours during the thundershowers yesterday morning. This is all standard Oklahoma weather and by no means severe (sans the ice storm). The grid is frayed and no one seems to have a good answer about why 30 mph winds knock out the power now.
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
I live between 12th and 24th E. with OG&E power and lost power for 40 minutes total. My daughter out on 72nd lost her power for 2 1/2 days with OEC.
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
i'm across 35, near the hospital. and i can't remember the last time we lost power. been here for 10 years
Participating Member
Re: Bury the power lines
I'm also between those two streets, but we were without power for about 12 hours. However, our entire neighborhood has buried lines, which means the culprit must have been a higher-level distribution line that feeds multiple neighborhoods. Those should be buried.
If a few people's lines go down, that sucks, but we shouldn't necessarily fret over it and spend public money on fixing that. But if a backbone line that feeds power to multiple neighborhoods is vulnerable, that needs to be addressed.
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