Superstorm Sandy killed about 100 people in the U.S.,wrecked neighborhoods along the Eastern Seaboard and snarled transportation for days. The storm also left a trail of crumpled transmission towers, flooded substations, splintered power poles and miles upon miles of downed power lines last month. The web that delivers power failed for some 8.5 million people on the East Coast and inland. Utilities will be dealing with and paying for the consequences for years. And the issues are not just for those in hurricane zones.
In some cases, failure was inevitable. It's almost impossible or prohibitively expensive to build a mountaintop transmission tower to withstand hurricane-force winds, says Otto Lynch, a transmission engineer and vice president of Power Line Systems Inc.