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Wire and Cable


How Modern Conductors are Improving Grid Reliability and Much More

Reflections: Nearly twenty years ago when I got into the energy business, reliability was a second-tier design objective for most transmission engineers. Safety factors had already been established and the materials we used for structures and powerline wires (conductors) were well known. While...

Vegetation Management


Advanced Survey Technologies Deliver Clear View of Geologic Hazards

Electric utilities commonly use trained foresters, traversing thousands of miles, to manually identify vegetation or other geographic hazards posing risks to transmission infrastructure. For one utility in the Western United States, the challenging terrain and accuracy limitations of laser range...

Case Study


Fort Collins Municipality Case Study

A proposal for equipping broadband services to the Fort Collins, CO, municipality was approved by residents and a $120 million bond is now providing Fort Collins with resources to build and improve the municipality’s infrastructure so it can support broadband service for any qualifying...

Infrastructure & Technologies


Aging Cable Infrastructure

The 2014 Annual Energy Outlook Report compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that total electricity demand will grow by 29 percent (0.9 percent per year) by 2040. While growth has slowed in every decade since the 1950s, due in part to efficiency gains in appliance...

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...

Outage Management & Restoration


Overhead T&D

Casting Doubts on Global Positioning

Many fleet executives working at electric utilities have doubts about implementing global positioning system (GPS) tracking technology into their fleet operations. A number of doubts exist. For example, GPS technologies are designed to track a vehicle’s whereabouts; this can lead to trust issues between fleet executives and their drivers. Second, the utility might not have the budget to include technologies such as GPS tracking on its expense sheet. Lastly, fleet executives might believe that the...

Overhead T&D Articles