At the time of this writing, it’s been a full week since there was power at my home. I live within OG&E’s electrical grid, so when it comes to being without power this past week, I’m nothing special. Many of OG&E’s customers had no power for days, and some will have no power for well over a week. By the time power is restored to everyone in their service area, OG&E’s own estimate is that it will have taken ten full days to repair all the damage from Oklahoma’s latest ice storm.
Ice storms are bears, no doubt about it. They are very hard on trees, and if the roads ice over, they are very hard on cars. But roads, for the most part, were not an issue during Oklahoma’s “Icemageddon” of 2020. The problem was the extra weight of the ice on trees, wires and poles. And what we discovered was that Oklahoma’s electric power grid, once again, was not up to the challenge.
Fact is, Oklahoma’s power grid isn’t up to much of Oklahoma’s weather. Every time the electricity goes out, which is far too often, we hear the same old thing. “The wind was hard;” “that was a lot of ice;” “a lot of rain fell, and there was lightning.” Then there are the familiar deflections: “Our crews are working overtime;” “Our crews are working in harsh conditions day and night;” and “We’ve hired crews from out-of-state and are working tirelessly.” No doubt, the deflections are true, and the linemen working to restore power deserve respect, but should it be necessary to put them at such risk? Do poles HAVE to snap in such high numbers?
I grew up in North Texas. I’ve lived in Oklahoma almost six years. Something I’ve noticed about the weather in this part of the country is that it’s extreme. Warm, clear days turn into thunderstorms so thick that the streetlights come on as the sky turns dark as night in the middle of the day. Summer-like weather in the morning can turn into a hard freeze by nightfall. Rain can come in buckets; hail shatters windshields; wind blows hard and gusty; lightning flashes like paparazzi at the Oscars; and ice seems to come out of nowhere.
Wind, snow, rain, ice, and lightning are ubiquitous in Oklahoma, but they always seem to be a surprise for OG&E and its grid.
During my first year in Oklahoma, there was an ice storm. The electricity failed for at least two days, long enough that we had to buy a generator to keep refrigerated food from spoiling.
A year or so later, there was a storm in Muskogee with some hard wind – not a tornado, mind you – just hard wind. We had a lightning strike that same night that popped a breaker on the high wire near my house. We were without power for four days in summer when the fix would have taken five minutes to accomplish, but every available body was in Muskogee replacing poles.
And now we have 2020. Everybody is talking about trees toppling and breaking, crashing the electric wires. No doubt, that’s true; I’ve seen the pictures. Nobody can be expected to anticipate trees uprooting due to ice. But, some of the pictures of broken electrical poles flat on the ground don’t show a tree anywhere close.
The reason I and my neighbors are constantly dumping gas into generators for extended periods every couple of years is not so much because of the weather, which is remarkably predictable in that we know the wind will blow hard and there will be storms, sometimes of the ice variety. Instead, it’s more about rotten electrical poles, and maybe untrimmed trees. OG&E and other electric providers simply are not maintaining their grids.
Admittedly, I’ve never been an electric pole inspector, but old, rotten poles are not that hard to spot. I once tried to complain about poles that had snapped some miles from my house in an effort to find out if the Corporation Commission was paying any attention to the problem. I’d passed by the poles that had broken and noticed they were in bad shape for years before. What I got for my trouble in calling the Corporation Commission was a career bureaucrat only interested in whether repairs were made, and not one bit interested in preventing problems in the first place.
OG&E is a private, for-profit company with a monopoly granted by government to provide electricity within a specific territory. Because it’s a monopoly, it is heavily regulated by the Corporation Commission, which is supposed to prevent what monopolies do – charge a high price for low-quality service. Oklahoma has the lowest electricity rates in the nation, and OG&E’s service is decent enough during good weather. Where OG&E falls woefully short, and the Corporation Commission deserves to carry at least some of the blame, is during less-than-ideal weather conditions, obviously because the grid is not properly maintained. OG&E, from what I’ve seen, seems to only replace poles after sending some of its customers back to the nineteenth century when the poles break.
OG&E is asking for the Corporation Commission to increase the rates it charges to customers in order to upgrade its grid. But while there is an argument for the upgrade OG&E wants to do, it doesn’t appear to be about replacing rotten poles with new ones.
Before OG&E’s customers should have to pay higher rates, how about an investigation into OG&E and the Corporation Commission? Cindy Byrd has proven she’s pretty good at auditing private companies, like EPIC charter schools, which by the way, is NOT a monopoly. How about an audit of OG&E, which IS a monopoly that its customers have no choice but to patronize? Let’s find out how often they replace poles as part of general maintenance as opposed to only replacing them when they break. Let’s find out how much of a revolving door between the Corporation Commission’s staff and OG&E there is. Let’s find out the last time the Corporation Commission even asked OG&E about compromised reliability due to inadequate maintenance. Let’s find out the financial cost to small businesses and homeowners and crippling what is supposed to be a modern city from having lost power for a week, or more.
To put it bluntly, the Corporation Commissioners need to do their jobs, investigate the state-granted OG&E monopoly, and make sure Oklahoma’s electric rate payers get quality service, not just in the best weather conditions, but in inclement weather as well, even if it means a modest rate increase. But if the Corporation Commission won’t do their jobs, let’s change the constitution so that they experience some real oversight from the legislature.
Byron Schlomach is Director of the 1889 Institute and can be reached at [email protected].
The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of 1889 Institute.
I spent 50 years covering the electric utility industry from generation through transmission, distribution, customer delivery, finance, new technology and financial issues so I am very familiar with the problems inherent in reliability of above-ground lines, If you are familiar with the best technology for long-term solutions, you know that underground are involved–which have their own problems which range from difficulty in performing regular inspections to idiots who either refuse to call the underground utility infrastructure beneath land where excavation or any kind is need to the technicians too lazy to properly flag the lines, pipes, etc., to the even bigger idiots who dig anyway along the flags saying, “I’l see anything before I hit it.” Also, the initial capital cost is astronomical compared to above ground power lines, and the repair costs underground when a line is damaged or develops a fault is far greater than making repairs to lines supported by various kinds of poles. Two other phenomena come into play as well:
*Galloping lines during major combination wind/heavy icing events.
*The incredible damage possible from extreme straight wind events.
To take the latter first: While I have not studied the detailed after-action NWS/NSFC reports, I understand peak winds ran consistently in the neighborhood of 70 mph for extended periods, with shorter bursts clocked at up to 100 mph in some areas during the Aug. 10 storms. That is more than enough to cause well constructed buildings to collapse and to carry whole trees or large portions airborne for substantial distances–more than far enough to bring down even a steel transmission pole and certainly a distribution pole or line. No amount of tree trimming could control that, because the trees involved wouldn’t be close to a utility easement and it would not matter if the pole was old or brand new–hit by that tree or half-tree.
GALLOPING LINES–When heavily iced, long stretches of power lines hit by winds start to move in waves from one pole to another–generally speaking, the larger the line (and therefore the more customers affected if it fails), the faster it moves–like a frightened horse galloping blindly to escape danger until it either break or is hit by something. Multiple turnpikes and dividied four-lane super highways were blocked by lines that, again based solely on the OHP descriptions of the incident, appear to have come down during some form of galoping. Again, the industry has been developing possible solutions for decades and has made progress, but it is a thorny proble. I’d recommend going to the Electric Power Rsearch Institute in Palo Alto for the industry-funded work (but generally solid scientifically and engineering-wise) and the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Sierra Club for cionsumer/environmentalist/ and in many cases counterpoints to the industry viewpoints (amazingly, there are areas of agreement). If you want to see what a straight windstorm can do, check out the pictures and descriptions from NWS in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the newspapers in Marshalltown (Marshall County), Iowa; the Grinnell Herald-Register in Grinnell, Iowa (Poweshiek County); the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Linn County, Iowa; The Des Moines Register for what the derecho wind disaster in July diid to the old growth trees in central Iowa and surrounding areas–if I recall, Grinnell, Montezuma and areas near Newton in Jasper County had some of the worst winds. A particularly telling shot shows a 100+ year old tree whose roots had grown completely under a triple wide sidewalk in a historic neighborhiood of Grinnell. They were about three feet deep and ran from the yard under the sidewalk and another six feet or more under the parking before hitting ther street. he winds literally tore down the tree so powerfully and abruptly that its roots completely broke through and crumbled several yards of the sidewalk before it blocked the street and took out power lines. Can’t put my hands on it this second ut it is an example of what straight winds can do. Should the city have taken all such trees out to avoid outages? That would have been an economic castrophe. Those trees made the historic houses extremely valuable for complete restoration as homes for top management of Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance (the biggest agricultural industry re-insurance carrier in the nation) with world headquarters in Grinnell. Other pushing the development based in major part on the trees are key ranking faculty and administrators at Grinnell College, Unity Hospital, a Junior College that recently came to town, etc. Such trees are also a major attraction for students considering Grinnell College, one of the most selective in the nation, because it gives the impression (or gave the impression before the storm disaster) of going to a super-college with all the modern big city attractions but a campus more like living in the most beautiful portions of the Ozarks or Arbuckle mountains. Damamage from loss of the trees in a city of 10,000 without the College students; 12,000 with (city land and college campus NOT counting the college’s multiple nature preserves). Tree and structure damage from wind alone just on the college campus exceeded $2 million. A foundation is being set up to handle the communitywide damage; its initial goal will be to raise $5- $10-million. I get that newspaper by mail and as you may know postal service especially for newspapers is in a shambles now–2-3 week delivery after publication has become common even for carrier-route pre-sorted newspaper which should arrive from Iowa in 2-3 days.
Just wanted to share the information. An issue well worth exploring, but it is more complex than it appears at first glance. As I wrote after a statewide eyestorm in stories for a dozen news outlets here and nationwide, “Follow a utility executive into his anxiety closet during a massive blackout until he reaches the darkest coirner and finds a box marked “Ice Storm.” He or she will shake uncontrollably, gasp, and show that this is the worst fear the individual can imagine. There is so much carnage and are so few remedies before or after. But angry mobs carrying axes dripping blood will demand action NOW.”
Thanks, John, for the thoughtful and extensive response. As I acknowledge in my essay, I know that a great many downed lines in the ice storm were unavoidably damaged. Perhaps I should have stated more clearly that I know there would have been many without power due to the weather no matter how well the grid was maintained. However, it’s obvious something is amiss when so many poles are broken in half, or the top third breaks off, and there is not a tree in sight. The part of the pole that should be weakest is at the ground, where rot can be expected to develop. When a rotten pole breaks in a high wind, it naturally takes otherwise decent poles with it. I do not advocate for even underground lines, and I am not unrealistic enough to think bad weather will not do damage. All I’m saying is that a better maintained grid can minimize that damage.