DOWN the line

Regular inspections ensure grid reliability, safety for lineworkers

A lot can happen to utility poles and power lines. Pole tops can decay over time due to natural weathering, sun damage and even insect infestations. A tree limb can yank a line loose. Wood can be split by a lightning strike. Woodpeckers can hollow out a pole. With 2,800 miles of overhead lines, 400 miles of underground lines and 55,000 poles, Wiregrass Electric Cooperative conducts regular inspections to minimize problems. The goal is to ensure the electrical system runs efficiently and safely, says WEC’s Vice President of Engineering,
Operations and Information Technology Jason Thrash.

“The whole intent behind it is to be pro active and maintain our system reliability, trying to get out ahead of problems that we may see or find that we can repair before they turn into a bigger problem,” Thrash says. “Maybe we can prevent an outage from being a long outage. We may take a brief outage to make repairs when we find things, or sometimes we find things and we’re able to repair them with out even taking an outage.” Inspections help improve reliability, although Thrash says not all outages can be prevented. When they do happen, he says restoring power safely and quickly is the priority. There are 15 substations in the 2,200 square miles of WEC’s service area. Each year, WEC’s service lineworkers are assigned substations. Over the course of a year, lineworkers inspect their assigned substation and the circuits of distribution lines, transformers, breakers and switches. Inspections are handled differently for underground lines. Since lines are bur ied, lineworkers inspect the equipment feeding those lines, such as the box trans formers seen in subdivisions. Lineworkers check the equipment’s integrity and look for potential problems caused by rodents, ant beds or even plants, trees or shrubs impacting access.