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Power outages are increasing as climate change drives more severe weather events across the U.S. Lines buried underground are significantly more reliable than overhead power lines, but only about a fifth of the country's lines are buried. In northern Michigan, some utilities are trying to change that. Vivian La reports from Interlochen Public Radio.
VIVIAN LA, BYLINE: One year ago, a devastating ice storm in northern Michigan knocked down trees and utility poles and took out power for thousands. Seventy-four-year-old Dave Whiting in Lewiston remembers the sounds.
DAVE WHITING: You sit in the house and you hear cracking, and you're always wondering how big of a branch and where it's going to fall 'cause you can't see nothing.
LA: In the middle of the blackout, Dave had heart trouble and had to go to the hospital.
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LA: His wife Wanda says the drive was dark and scary. Driving the same route today, she points to the utility poles.
WANDA WHITING: These were all down. Everything was down. These poles were all broken, snapped.
LA: Wanda's husband, thankfully, made it to the hospital, but the power in the area didn't come back on for another two weeks.
W WHITING, LEWISTON, MI RESIDENT: I still can't get over how astonished I was how much we rely on street lights.
LA: More than a year later, people are still recovering from the ice storm, one of the worst to ever hit the region. It was a reminder of how Michigan's aging grid is vulnerable to extreme weather. The state sees some of the longest power outages in the country, and climate change could make that worse. Research suggests northern Michigan will see more freezing rain instead of snow and more destructive ice storms. The local electric utility says it's trying to prepare for that future. Going forward, it will bury all new power lines underground.
SHARI CULVER: There's reliability benefits for our membership because it's going to help prevent outages over the long term.
LA: Shari Culver is chief operating officer for Great Lakes Energy Cooperative in northern Michigan. Storms are less likely to damage underground lines, but right now, less than a quarter of the utility's lines are buried. That's because it's really expensive. Culver says it can cost three to five times more to bury a line than stringing it overhead.
CULVER: I mean, you could bury all the electric lines if you had the financial resources to do so.
LA: It can cost $400,000 per mile in Michigan to bury existing lines, utilities say. It requires tearing up roads. And underground lines are hard to repair, says Tony Chartrand, who works for another local utility, Traverse City Light & Power.
TONY CHARTRAND: As you can see, all this line is under sidewalk. So if it's somewhere over there, we have to rip up the sidewalk, dig into that.
LA: But there are places where burying is cheaper than constantly fixing overhead lines. He says it's not a one-size-fits-all approach.
CHARTRAND: I think everyone's looking at, how can we be more reliable? And part of that solution is undergrounding lines, but it's not necessarily undergrounding everything.
LA: Michigan utilities aren't alone. The U.S. is seeing more power outages because of extreme weather. Grid upgrades, like burying lines, can help, but the problem everywhere is cost, says Stanford researcher Tao Sun.
TAO SUN: If the utility want to make any investment, this money doesn't come from nowhere. They would have to pass on those costs to their customers.
LA: And that's often a hard sell. Sun says utilities need to be more proactive, figure out where undergrounding is most beneficial and get local buy-in for rate increases. Right now, it typically happens after disaster strikes. California utilities, for instance, are in the middle of huge undergrounding projects after destructive wildfires. Wanda Whiting, the northern Michigan resident, can't help but wonder how the power lines nearby will hold up in the next storm and if there's a better solution.
W WHITING, LEWISTON, MI RESIDENT: And if it meant going underground, then by God, go underground.
LA: She worries every time she hears snow and ice in the forecast. For NPR News, I'm Vivian La in Interlochen.
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