As demand for electricity continues to grow, transmission engineers are often faced with numerous challenges. Building new lines requires a tremendous effort securing new right-of-ways, permits, equipment, personnel, funding and more. Upgrading existing transmission lines generally requires replacing existing structures with larger, more expensive structures and larger, heavier conductors. While this option alleviates the need to secure new right-of-ways, removal of the existing structures generally has substantial environmental impact, is very costly and requires relatively long outages – that are often difficult to accommodate.
In the United States, and more than 60 other countries, many utilities have discovered that reconductoring with the ACCC® Conductor allows them to quickly increase the capacity of the existing system without the need to replace or reinforce existing structures. This not only simplifies the permitting process and reduces environmental impact, it also reduces the length of outages – with little revenue loss.
While the goal of increasing capacity is quickly achieved, second tier benefits also include sag reduction which can improve safety, reduce wildfire risks and outages. Additionally, as another U.S. utility recently discovered, the ACCC® Conductor’s improved efficiency is saving their customers nearly one million dollars every year as a result of decreased line losses. If this is something that interests you, please email [email protected]
