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Outage Management & Restoration


Fighting Wildfires to Increase Pole Protection

Evaluating pole selection for increased protection BY BUTCH BERNHARDT, North American Wood Pole Council The number of wildland fires reached record levels in many states in 2014, prompting questions about what poles perform more efficiently in fires: steel or wood. Research from a bulletin...

Wire and Cable


Utility Proactively Tests Underground Cable

Distribution companies are continually looking for ways to improve system reliability, all while conserving capital investments and operational costs. With an aging infrastructure, one of the main issues that utilities face is a way to assess the actual condition of their capital assets. With...

Disaster & Recovery


Outage Management Review: When the Lights Go Out

The occurrence of severe weather events is on the rise at an alarming rate. According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, extreme weather events that used to happen once every 40 years now occur as frequently as every six years in some regions; severe weather is expected to become even more frequent...

Case Study


The End of the Road for Transmission Incentives

In a significant shift, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has decided to abandon its transmission incentives policy, particularly the construction work in progress (CWIP) incentives. This decision marks a pivotal change in how transmission projects are financed and regulated,...

Underground Distribution


Underground Distribution Sensors

Exploring the benefits of wide-area monitoring BY TED MYERS, On-Ramp Wireless The average citizen and business experiences over 120 minutes of electricity outage duration a year. This has a significant societal impact costing 10s to hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Furthermore, the measure...

Vegetation Management


FERC Approves Interconnection for Talen Energy, Amazon Data Center

In a significant move that underscores the growing demand for reliable and sustainable energy to power the expanding digital infrastructure, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved an interconnection agreement between Talen Energy, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Exelon. This...

Overhead T&D

Speed Up Damage Assessment, Assembly and Dispatch of Resources During Outage Events

In a survey conducted in September 2016 by ARCOS LLC (a provider of emergency resource management software), the software provider asked utilities how they manage damage assessment in the wake of major events like storms and earthquakes. Thirty-five percent of utilities polled said they relied on paper and pencil along with manually entering data in their outage management systems (OMS). Another 31 percent relied on electronic forms, but still entered data by hand into an OMS. Twelve percent made use of online damage assessment software, which was not integrated with an OMS. And another 12 percent had damage assessment software fully integrated with an OMS.

Overhead T&D Articles