The winter storms that have been hitting the country in the past couple of week left tens of thousands of Americans without power, and many more will continue lose power as more ice and snow storms are expected in the North, CNN reported.
Currently, the power outages are not inevitable, but Americans have grown to tolerate them, according to CNN.
German power grids have outages at an average rate of 21 minutes per year, but even with the worst storms, Germany keeps their lights on because they have underground power lines, CNN reported.
Germany buries almost all of its low-voltage and medium-voltage power lines. These are the lines that serve individual homes and apartments, according to CNN. The option is open for the United States, but higher costs have kept power lines above ground and at natures disposal.
Industry representatives claim that it costs about 10 times as much to bury wire as to string wire overhead, almost $1 million per mile due to American cities being less dense than European cities, CNN reported. Denser cities require fewer miles of wire to serve their populations.
A large-scale study recently conducted in the United Kingdom estimated the cost at 4.5. to 5.5 times more than building wires above ground, not 10 times more, CNN reported.
The upside is American cities are becoming denser as the baby boomers age and opt for central-city living, according to CNN. The warming climate are making storms and power outages common throughout the U.S., but for the older population power outages can be extremely dangerous.
In 2003, France suffered a heat wave which left 10,000 people dead due to the lack of air conditions, and almost all of them were elderly people, CNN reported. As summers get hotter, burying power lines could save lives.
Another reason cited for investing in burying power lines underground is that it could create more jobs for the hundreds of thousand unemployed Americans who used to worked in the construction industry, according to CNN.
