On outages and clear Oklahoma skies

Another blizzard has hit the Northeast. Atlanta is frozen solid. There’s snow in 49 of the 50 states, according to CNN, even here in Tulsa. But, today, we have a clear, bright blue Oklahoma sky reflected in that remaining white.

There’s a lot of real estate in the sky in Oklahoma. The blue horizon seems to go up and out forever, an endless ceiling with no glass barrier in sight. On days like today, it’s almost impossible to believe that the bright blue ends somewhere, that eventually the dark of space will interfere and stop that tinted ascent.

We don’t put a lot of skyscrapers into the real estate of an Oklahoma sky, but we do put quite a bit of one thing---electricity. Towers and poles dominate the landscape here. They trace along highways and roads, turn left or right to follow the bits of civilization and urban sprawl. They go up and out the way Manhattan builds office buildings.

It makes for cheaper energy. It makes for quicker hook-ups if you decide to build out in the middle of an Oklahoma nowhere to enjoy that deep blue overhead real estate.

But, sometimes, it can be problematic.

Sometimes the real estate above our heads in Oklahoma isn’t that bright blue we’re used to. Sometimes it’s black or gray or even green. Green’s the worst. That means tornado. But black can also bring strong winds, sometimes hurricane force. And gray can mean a whole lot of ice---all items that can destroy the biggest builds of our Oklahoma sky, that power structure.

When the worst ice storm in state history hit here in 2007, the parts of Tulsa with lots of power real estate in the sky were crippled. Poles were down everywhere. Transformers exploded. It was chaos---except in those newer spots with underground equipment. They had a few spotty power outages but, all in all, maintained a good front.

After that storm, I thought, “Perhaps we should stop building our power structures into the bright blue of the Oklahoma sky.”

However, there is a problem with moving all these bits and pieces underground: cost. It’s expensive. And, locally, for a utility caught in a recession and already hurting from a series of bad winters (including that historic ice storm), it’s not something easily done.

I know our utility is anxious to return to upkeep and undergrounding, but I also realize their dilemma with cost and cutbacks. And, while the average customer might love the reliability and safety from ice and wind that underground power provides, they are not willing to pay out of pocket for it. Again, this is as equally understandable as the utility’s bottom line concerns. So, no fair pointing fingers at each other with this argument.

For the moment, the real estate in that Oklahoma sky remains the most practical power option. I’ll just keep an eye out for the blue to change to black or gray and hope that our infrastructure in the air can be spared---at least until the utility can spring for undergrounding things again (or customers are willing to pay for it). Until then, power will remain in the air, and there’s just not much we can do about it from our spot on terra firma below.