Latest news and stories about underground cables in Portugal for expats and residents.
To reduce damage, the Minister for the Environment and Energy is calling for power lines to be buried.
The minister is calling for overhead electricity lines to be placed underground to reduce storm and weather-related outages and strengthen the resilience of the power network; the measure could involve higher upfront costs but deliver fewer long-term disruptions.
The minister compared Portugal's situation with that of other European countries, such as Spain and Italy, where the share of underground networks reaches around 45%, advocating a balanced approach between costs for consumers and taxpayers and the gains in resilience.
João Jesus Ferreira, an electrical engineer at the Instituto Superior Técnico, warns of the importance of implementing underground electricity networks in Portugal, but cautions they may face a barrier: “they cost between three and six times as much”.
