Minnesota's aging power poles: Xcel ramps up efforts to replace poles

(FOX 9) - More than two thirds of the utility poles throughout Minnesota are at least a half-century old and records show their failure rate dramatically increases with age, a problem exacerbated by climate change, experts said. 

Those realities have prompted Xcel Energy to ramp up its efforts to routinely inspect and occasionally replace aging equipment before it fails. Xcel has roughly 500,000 poles statewide, with an average age of 54, four years beyond what the utility considers its "useful life."

"Age is really not that important in terms of determining what needs to be replaced or not," said Michael Lamb, a senior vice president at Xcel Energy. "We build assets for decades."

Context

Although the utility aims for the equipment to last decades, they do not always make it that long.

After the poles reach 40 years old, records show the failure rate rises and continues to do so each decade. The largest jump happens when they are between 60 and 70, when the failure rate nearly triples from just over five percent to more than 15.

"You’d be looking at things that could fail suddenly. It could fail rapidly," said Dr. Mahmoud Kabalan, the director of the Center for Microgrid Research at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.

Kabalan said the aging grid poses threats that are difficult to predict, especially with more severe weather than we experienced in recent decades. 

"Once they age beyond a certain limit, a big storm could take them out," he said. "You just don’t know when it fails. It could stay operational and could meet the specs, but a large storm – a large ice storm – or high winds could cause those poles to fail."

Changing weather

Experts said climate change is the singular threat facing the power grid, both in Minnesota and nationwide.

"As weather events become more severe, outages do rise with it," said Kabalan. "So, there is a strong correlation between severe weather and outages."

Lamb agreed that severe weather remains a significant threat to the grid.

"The climate changing is a big challenge that we need to get prepared for," he said.

There is at least one solution to weather-related outages, but it has considerable drawbacks.

Why not put more wires underground?

At the vice-presidential debate on Oct. 1, Gov. Tim Walz asked during a discussion about infrastructure, "How do we make sure that we’re protecting by burying our power lines?"

While it is possible to put them underground, it is not practical in most cases because the cost is too extraordinary for most consumers.

Xcel said putting aboveground lines underground can cost as much as $500,000 per mile in suburban neighborhoods and $5 million per mile in urban areas.

"It’s not just costly for the utility – which ultimately gets into our price – it’s also expensive for our homeowners," said Lamb.

He also pointed out that buried lines are not immune to outages, and it often takes longer to repair them.

Xcel routinely inspects and replaces its poles, if necessary. The utility deploys technicians on the ground and flies drones to inspect them from every angle. In 2023, it inspected nearly 56,000 of its 500,000 poles, replacing 11 percent of them.

Xcel announced on Thursday that it would invest $13.2 billion between 2025 and 2030 in the region that includes Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, more than half of which will go toward improving its aging transmission and distribution systems there. In addition, Xcel secured a $100 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, which it plans to use to fund an effort to reinforce pole tops as part of a program expected to launch in late 2024.

"It’s in our DNA to keep the lights on for our customers, and we really feel their frustration when they go out," said Lamb.