OCONOMOWOC — Heavy and wet snow often comes with the potential of large power outages. Thousands of customers in southeast Wisconsin lost power Tuesday as a winter storm moved through our area. But not every community is susceptible in southeastern Wisconsin.
It’s hard to find overhead power lines in Oconomowoc. That’s because 90 percent of them are buried underground. It’s an investment the city and its residents have made over time specifically for days like Tuesday.
For Marsha Pickl of Oconomowoc, the first winter snow storm is welcome.
"I think it's wonderful, I love winter weather,” she said. "I was afraid we weren't going to get it this year again."
While shoveling is no fun, she knows from past experience that she doesn’t have to worry about being left in the cold without power.
"We had the ice storm two years ago and the electricity did not go out, they replaced my roof, my siding, my deck, everything and the electricity did not go off one time,” she said.
Oconomowoc Utilities Manager Kevin Kaari says it’s all because of a decision the city made decades ago.
“What is the benefit of having power lines underground?” TMJ4 reporter Ben Jordan asked.
"On days like this, or thunderstorms or when you have high winds, the advantage is our lines aren't out there to be affected by the weather,” Kaari replied.
Kaari says Oconomowoc has been slowly chipping away at its overhead lines by removing about 2 percent each year. He says it’s all in an effort to have a more reliable power source than most other cities.
"The city of Oconomowoc, we're a little different in that we're a growing city. So right off the bat with our new developments and stuff like that, we do all of that underground from the start,” he said.
While the city of Oconomowoc decided to pay for that change on its own, We Energies says nearly half of its power lines in southeastern Wisconsin are underground, including a neighborhood in Elm Grove.
"One of the big things is you look around. Elm Grove is known for what? Their large trees and so outage issues had been a real issue here for a long time because of those trees, because of branches coming into contact with our equipment,” spokesman Brendan Conway said.
While the company invests millions in new underground lines each year, Conway says there’s a reason most of its lines are still visible.
“45 percent of power lines are underground, why not 100 percent?” Jordan asked.
“Not only is that impractical, it would be incredibly expensive,” Conway replied. “That would cost tens of billions of dollars extra onto customers rates. So it just doesn't make sense."
Conway says outages can still happen with underground lines due to freezing and flooding — and it typically takes much longer to fix.
"There's no perfect solution,” he said. “That's why every neighborhood, every place we look at we try to find what's a solution that makes sense for that location and we are constantly analyzing and identifying that."
Pickl wouldn’t have it any other way in her neighborhood.
“This is the lowest price we've had too, so whatever they did, they must have made it economically,” she said.
Oconomowoc’s goal is to have nearly 99.5 percent of its power lines buried within the next five years.
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