Power to the people

I ended up watching for more than three hours, after which time the new pole had yet to be installed. But it was fascinating to see the specialty tools and techniques they used to prepare the new pole and to ready the high-voltage power lines for transferal from one pole to the other. Throughout, the crew worked slowly and carefully, apparently thinking through each step before taking it.

Our recent storms damaged poles and wires all around the Bay Area. At one point, more than 100,000 PG&E customers were without power. Because wind and falling trees (or branches) are often the direct cause of storm-related outages, I’ve often thought that undergrounding our power and telecommunications cables would greatly increase the reliability of those systems. And as a benefit, our view of the skies would no longer be crisscrossed by wires.

Eliminating overhead wires is relatively easy in new construction, and thankfully pretty much all of the larger development projects (and some smaller ones) I’ve watched over the last couple of years have moved the surrounding wires underground. Thanks to such projects, power poles and overhead lines are relatively scarce in and near downtown Redwood City these days. But power poles continue to stand tall elsewhere, particularly in Redwood City’s residential neighborhoods.

Each house needs one or more connections to the “grid,” and the cheapest and easiest way to do that is through the use of power poles strung with overhead wires. In many cases, those poles and wires are located along the street, making for easy maintenance but leaving them visible to passersby. Elsewhere, poles run down the middle of block, and the wires connect to the houses from the rear. Although far less noticeable from the street, with this technique homeowners are treated to the sight of wires while enjoying their backyards. And in the event of a problem, PG&E (or whichever company is having the problem) has the right to enter those backyards to access their wires.

At first thought, undergrounding seems to make a lot of sense. But stringing wires from pole to pole is far simpler, and surely far cheaper, than digging long trenches and installing cables within waterproof conduits. Plus, consider that the power connection to most existing homes is done through wires running through the air to a periscope-like service mast that brings the power down to the main service panel. Undergrounding service to an existing home would involve not only running underground conduits from the street (or the backyard) to each house, but also the necessary work to get the wires to the service panel. In some cases, this might be relatively simple, but in others it might involve altering landscaping and hardscaping, and perhaps opening up one of the home’s exterior walls.

Undergrounding might be difficult, but it’s not impossible. With new construction things are relatively simple, since the connections can be planned for. And with existing homes in residential neighborhoods, Redwood City showed that undergrounding utilities is indeed possible when it undertook its “Middlefield Road Underground Utility District and Streetscape Project.” That project undergrounded all of that street’s power and telecommunications lines between Main Street and Woodside Road, and removed all of the now-unneeded utility poles. The result is a far more attractive street, and a number of homes and apartments that presumably have more reliable service.

Undergrounding all of Redwood City’s overhead wires would be a wonderful thing, but that simply isn’t realistic. Hopefully, though, PG&E is identifying those power lines that cause an outsize number of issues during intense weather, and working to underground those. Perhaps then more of PG&E’s workers, too, can remain home and snug during future winter storms.

Greg Wilson is the creator of Walking Redwood City, a blog inspired by his walks throughout Redwood City and adjacent communities. He can be reached at greg@walkingRedwoodCity.com. Follow Greg on Twitter @walkingRWC.