Electricity Forum Intelligent Power Today Magazine Arc Flash Clothing

Conductors & Materials


The Overlooked Benefits of High-Performance Powerline Conductors

Background:For over 100 years Transmission Engineers have relied on aluminum conductors strengthened by steel core wires, commonly referred to as ACSR conductors. These conductors offered reasonable performance and durability and were capable of operating at temperatures up to 93° C. Above this...

Disaster & Recovery


Coping with Extreme Weather Events

How to optimize the entire outage lifecycle BY RICK NICHOLSON, Ventyx The extreme weather just keeps coming. In 2012, there were 11 outages due to severe weather costing at least $1 billion. The year of 2013 had its share as well. More and more, the scale and variety of such major events are...

Vegetation Management


Vegetation Management Best Practices

Reduce common risks and maintain system reliability BY SARA SANKOWICH, Unitil Corporation Most North American electric utilities understand that vegetation management is a key factor in maintaining system reliability. While many utilities have designed and implemented vegetation management programs...

Underground Distribution


Monitoring Underground Lines with SCADA

How SCADA can help prevent repairs and service disruptions BY RICHARD CLARK, InduSoft Underground transmission and distribution lines create unique challenges, as they require special insulation materials to protect conductors, and complex cooling systems because heat cannot be dissipated in free...

Distribution Protection


ArmorBuiltTM Wildfire Shield Proven Protection for Utility Poles

IntroductionIn November of 2018, the deadliest, most destructive wildfire in California history burned a total of 240 square miles, destroyed 18,804 structures and resulted in 85 civilian fatalities. Known as the Camp Fire, it devastated several communities including the towns of Paradise and...

Overhead Distribution


Outage Management: Restore Power in Less Time

Improving power grid reliability is a major goal of the electric power industry and can reduce economic losses, lost productivity, and customer inconvenience from power disruptions. For several utilities, Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) funding accelerated the application of fault location,...

Overhead T&D

Field Worker Connectivity: Mobile technology for utilities

Moving mobile technology to the job site

BY SCOTT BALL, Motion Computing

The world looks very different from the top of a utility pole, or from a manhole on an underground power junction. As electric utilities expand the deployment of technology to their field workers, it is becoming more critical that information technology (IT) departments be able to observe their environment from the worker’s vantage point.

Years ago, IT departments worked with a precursory...

Overhead T&D Articles