飓风玛丽亚在波多黎各造成的破坏是在维持和升级基础设施的重要性中，尽管做出这样做的重要性。新利18备用官网登录它推动了基础设施成本高昂的重点，但它的好处对生命安全，经济和人类健康和舒适是必不可少的。风暴已经留下了几乎所有岛上的350万居民，没有权力。他们必须与几个月内没有电的生活前景。

Proper care and maintenance might have protected the infrastructure from damage. Maria’s 155-mph winds would have devastated almost any electric infrastructure, but years of neglect and underspending by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority left the system in tatters even before the storm struck. Now, in addition to restoring the infrastructure, the costs of ruined lives and livelihoods, lost income, economic decline and public-health protection must be added to the cost of restoring infrastructure that should have been better maintained. The bottom line is we can pay now or pay later.

There has been a heightened awareness of the need for hardening since the 2004-2005 storm season, says Bill Snyder, vice president of technical consulting for Quanta Technology, which has studied and is helping to implement some hardening strategies. “I think most utilities have evaluated how to do hardening.”

公用事业最初面临着消费者团体和监管机构关于硬化升级成本的一些推动力，但随着风暴，洪水和龙卷风增加，“监管机构在我们的经验中更加了解，更加了解中断时间，”斯奈德说。

Regulators and utilities are looking beyond a cost-benefit analysis that tallies only the price of replacing infrastructure to a cost-benefit analysis that also accounts for the lost wages, lost business and lost lives. “A broader economic view is becoming a more common approach in the regulatory authority for hardening,” Snyder says. Storm-hardening activities generally also improve the general reliability of the grid.

Florida now even requires its utilities to have a storm-hardening plan. This forward-thinking approach enabled Florida Power and Light to invest $3 billion in its grid, and at first blush,appearsto have allowed the distribution system to withstand Hurricane Irma’s 145-mph winds. Duke Energy Florida is embarking on a similar program; New Orleans-based Entergy spends $1 billion a year on storm-hardening; and New Jersey’s Public Service Electric and Gas spent $1.2 billion hardening its system after Superstorm Sandy. Microgrids are being used in some areas to keep critical hospitals and other infrastructure operational when the rest of the grid fails.

While there has been a great deal more oversight and spending on electric infrastructure on the U.S. mainland, we still have an electric grid that is aging, old, underfunded and in many places unable to withstand storms.

A 2013 report from the U.S. Energy Dept. and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers found that between 2003 and 2012 weather-related power outages cost the U.S. economy an average of $18 billion to $33 billion each year, and in 2008, when Hurricane Ike hit, may have cost up to $75 billion. During that time, there were 679 widespread outages due to weather including blizzards, droughts, and storms. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says weather-related outages have increased significantly since 1992.

更容易受到风暴损伤

The report highlights two key conclusions: the aging of the grid has made the U.S. more susceptible to severe-weather outages; and events that cause these billion-dollar outages are going to become more frequent.

美国土木工程师协会今年在其基础设施报告卡中，由于基础设施升级和风暴硬化不足，部分的能源基础设施是“D +”。“一些国家制定了风暴硬化的政策，以提高天气事件的可靠性，但这些通常受到当地政治的影响，而不是工程师的建议，”根据ASCE报告。

This century, spending on storm-hardening is on the rise, but the efforts are sporadic and underfunded. As highlighted in the ASCE report, national “storm-hardening policies” are needed to improve reliability during weather events.

Without such policies or federal leadership, states that have invested little in hardening efforts may find themselves, like Puerto Rico, with a recovery bill they simply can’t afford after the next storm. Also similar to the Caribbean territory’s current dilemma, that’s simply a cost too great for the public to bear.