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NHGuy t1_jcbsyuy wrote

It's cost prohibitive - after the 2009 ice storm, where 400,00 NH residents lost power, WMUR did a short story on burying lines. Back then the cost was about $17 billion.

"...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."

https://www.wmur.com/article/should-nh-s-power-lines-be-buried-to-avoid-blackouts/5155920

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schillerstone OP t1_jcbv9a3 wrote

This context is super helpful to know what they are saying , they being "utility officials'" . Such a study needs to be completed by a neutral public policy think tank.

"utility officials said it probably doesn't make sense to bury them to try to prevent power outages."

Key word here is "probably "

If 400k residents lost power, and their trouble was worth $100 a day, there you have 40milliion dollars. Airlines get penalized for late flights. The math changes depending on what they measured.example: public policy demanding customer rebates by outage day would change the math.

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schillerstone OP t1_jcbvnrq wrote

This context is super helpful to know what they are saying , they being "utility officials'" . Such a study needs to be completed by a neutral public policy think tank.

"utility officials said it probably doesn't make sense to bury them to try to prevent power outages."

Key word here is "probably "

If 400k residents lost power, and their trouble was worth $100 a day, there you have 40milliion dollars. Airlines get penalized for late flights. The math changes depending on what they measured.example: public policy demanding customer rebates by outage day would change the math.

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NHGuy t1_jcbwdf8 wrote

PUBLIC utilities are beholden to the state on behalf of the public. They know what their costs are. Who is going to pay for this study?

Let's say that they are off by half. That's still $8 or 9 BILLION dollars. Who do you think is going to foot the bill for this?

I'm a born skeptic and a cynic, but at some point it's just plain silly

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schillerstone OP t1_jcbx0yt wrote

As we speak, the DOT is pushing an obscene amount of federal dollars down to NH munis for multimillion dollar bike lanes. There's plenty of money.

The new pentagon budget is 842 billion. Let's start there.

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NHGuy t1_jcbxiyx wrote

It's easy to speculate and blow steam on Reddit

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schillerstone OP t1_jcbxzcy wrote

BTW, we are the public that the utilities are beholden too so let's keep talking

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