More Hilton Head power lines will be invisible by 2020. But will your electric bill go up?
A 15-year project to take Hilton Head’s power lines underground will finish up this year, according to Palmetto Electric Cooperative officials.
The $31-million project began in 2004 and targeted 28 specific sites across the island where above-ground power lines would be buried between three and five feet.
Now in the final year of the project, Palmetto Electric reports that there are five sites left.
“The vast majority will be complete by the end of the year,” Tray Hunter, vice president for marketing and public relations for Palmetto Electric said Friday.
By “vast majority,” Hunter said he means “99.999 percent” of the project.
The five remaining projects where crews will be working are at Gumtree, Wild Horse, Jonesville, Marshland roads and in the Dillon Road/Fish Haul area.
Those areas took longer than the others because in order to dig trenches for power lines, Palmetto Electric had to obtain permission from property owners.
In areas where properties have several owners or are listed as heirs property, Hunter said it took longer to contact everyone involved.
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What’s the difference?
The new underground system will be safer and lead to fewer power outages, Hunter said.
Moving power lines underground has been criticized by our neighbors in North Carolina, who formed a task force to study the benefits of burying lines after a 2002 snow storm left around 2 million without power, according to CNN.
That task force found that moving lines underground increased power costs for customers and take longer to repair.
But Hilton Head power bills aren’t likely to jump, utility officials said.
“Palmetto Electric will not increase rates (or) member’s bills at the completion of the underground conversation process due to the project,” Hunter told The Island Packet.
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Although Hilton Head has gotten snow in recent memory, Hunter said above ground lines aren’t as threatened by snow and ice here as they are by hurricanes.
After Hurricane Matthew, he said above ground lines that became tangled with tree limbs contributed to a long clean up process. The burial project was set back “six to seven months.”
The underground system — although threatened by flooding — will have a much quicker recovery process after extreme weather, Hunter said.
“Once the water recedes from a storm, it can really just be cleaning the transformer,” Hunter said. “You’re not having to replace six spans of above-ground service (lines).”
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But both Hunter and the electric industry admit that underground systems are more expensive.
While a new above ground power line can cost around $390,000 per mile, underground lines and the synthetic conduits that house them are around $2 million per mile, according to the trade publication Electric Light & Power.
But the Hilton Head project includes transferring lines from above ground to beneath the soil, which usually means a lot of the conversion costs are salvageable because new lines don’t have to be installed, according to an Edison Electric Institute study from 2012.
The $31-million island project was funded by a monthly, three percent fee paid by all Hilton Head Island Palmetto Electric customers since 2004. Hunter said the fee averaged between $3 and $4 per household per monthly bill.
This story was originally published February 15, 2019 at 1:07 PM.
