With the biggest storms behind West Virginia, a big question on many peoples' minds is: How can power companies prevent widespread damage when the next big storm hits?
American Electric Power spokesperson Phil Moye said the company can only do so much to hamper destruction preemptively, especially since a storm like the one that hit June 29 only comes once or twice per decade.
"When you have winds in a mountainous, forested stated like West Virginia, you're going to have damage," Moye said.
But he did say homeowners can trim down their chances of downed power lines on their property.
"Plant trees like dogwoods and purple leave plums that won't grow up into your lines," Moye said.
But energy experts say there are options to prevent major outages. These include burying power lines underground or rerouting electricity through power grids.
State Journal energy correspondent Taylor Kuykendall said experts tell him it comes down to cost.
"The Electric Power Research Institute says it costs between $5 million and $15 million per mile to bury [a power line]. In West Virginia, that's closer to $15 million dollars per mile."
And Moye said West Virginia's jagged geography contributes to that price tag.
"We're always going to have trees that are up above our power lines," he said.
Kuykendall referenced a study in which burying power lines for the state of North Carolina would increase customers' electric bills by 125 percent.
When presented with the option, West Virginians felt divided on the issue of whether they would pay more in return for less outages.
"No, I feel like our electric rates are already too high. And we've had rate increases consistently over the past couple years, and I pay enormous electric bills in the summer," said Karen Sheets, a Charleston resident.
She added: "If they repaired the damage instead of putting a band-aid on it: that's a big step. I don't think the consumer should have to be responsible and pay for everything that's not fixed."
But some other locals felt differently on the issue.
"Sure, if I had the money," said Janet Jones of Nitro. "If you're out of power for a week or three days, you lose all your food if you don't have anything to keep your refrigerator going."
Moye said AEP would probably never bury the bulk of West Virginia's power lines due to high cost and low reliability. Once power is fully restored, he said AEP will then turn its attention to how to prevent widespread devastation in the future.
According to Moye, the biggest lesson AEP learned from this storm was how to organize the thousands of linemen who came to help with restoration efforts.
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2013 WorldNow and WOWK. All Rights Reserved.
