rural electricity NPR Digital Services RSS Generator 0.94 NPR Digital Services RSS Generator 0.94 rural electricity Fri, 17 Sep 2021 21:11:35 +0000 https://www.harvestpublicmedia.org Seth Bodine More power lines could move underground as part of an effort included in the infrastructure bill to update the nation’s energy system, but rural energy providers still worry about the cost of installation and maintenance. The $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which passed the Senate in August, includes $73 billion to modernize the electric grid. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says moving power lines underground, a practice called “undergrounding,” may be part of that effort. She says this would protect consumers from blackouts caused by severe weather. Countries like Germany and the Netherlands are already moving their power lines underground, and Granholm says that’s something the U.S. should invest in too. “In other countries, there's a lot of effort of undergrounding distribution and transmission wires, where you can put soil over the top and just farm on top of it and have the farmer compensated for this line that goes underneath the ground that you can't even see,” https://www.harvestpublicmedia.org/post/efforts-shore-electrical-grid-could-mean-moving-power-lines-underground 1046 as https://www.harvestpublicmedia.org Fri, 17 Sep 2021 20:56:48 +0000 Efforts To Shore Up The Electrical Grid Could Mean Moving Power Lines Underground Seth Bodine Rural areas are often the last to receive broadband. The lack of broadband is similar to another issue that rural communities faced decades ago — rural electrification. About 22% of Americans who live in rural areas that lack broadband, compared to 1.5% of those in cities, according to the Federal Communications Commission. “In rural areas, you can have less than 10 customers for every mile of fiber optics that you have,” says Hamid Vahdatipour, CEO of Lake Region Electric Cooperative. “In town, that number could go as high as 50 or 70 customers per mile, so it is difficult to provide this kind of service for rural America.” Vahdatipour says rural broadband faces the same basic challenge as electricity: for-profit companies don’t want to invest. The federal government fixed that issue by setting up cooperatives to help rural residents pay to install poles and lines. Now the same cooperatives that set up electricity want to add broadband to their list of services. But while the https://www.harvestpublicmedia.org/post/first-electricity-now-internet-rural-areas-struggle-gain-infrastructure 1029 as https://www.harvestpublicmedia.org Thu, 29 Jul 2021 21:46:29 +0000 First Electricity, Now Internet: Rural Areas Struggle To Gain Infrastructure