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Power Outages

Long ago Europe elected to bury their electric grid underground. This strategy, while expensive, saved money in the long run. The decision, however, came about as a direct result of the risk to life caused by downed power-lines during the bombings of WWII.
Historians claim that downed power-lines caused more deaths than the bombs.

Our electric grid is dysfunctional, not for lack of capacity, but for lack of coordination between private electric power companies. I would think this super storm with the wide-spread electric failure might afford an opportunity to bury our highly vulnerable grid and coordinate its planning on a broader scale.

It seems to me that electricity is the ultimate infrastructure for the common good. Electric power should be cheap, untaxed, abundant, clean and totally reliable. By clean, I mean free of surges, brown-outs and variations from the standard, safe for computer use. The economic benefits would be enormous not to mention the reduced cost of recovery from such disasters as we are presently experiencing. The technology is there. All we need is the courage to embrace the challenge and maybe take advantage of this motivating opportunity
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