@OregonLive It's very expensive, but the least impactful action for this expansion should be through undergrounding. Something that isn't mentioned here is the threat from winter storm damages such as ice to these facilities, like we saw in early 2024 that led to a presidential disaster declaration.

More and more extreme climactic events are making overhead electrical infrastructure prohibitively expensive to build and maintain. From what I've seen within disaster recovery across Western States during the last 10 years, undergrounding is the future of resilient power systems. Undergounding also means no, or very few trees need to be cut.

#oregon #powerutilities #ClimateSolutions #Portland