CCostanzo

How Engineered Mechanical Shunts Are Superior For Overhead Connector Repairs

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you believed one thing to be true and then found out years later that it wasn't?

For many years, experienced lineman and engineers believed that cutting out a splice on an overhead line and replacing it with two splices and a length of new conductor was better than shunting it with a ClampStar®. However, the below graph and adjacent IR image puts that falsehood to rest, once and for all!

As seen in the image above, prior to failure, the new splice, installed on new conductor, was running at about 150°C (50°C cooler than the 200°C conductor). In failure mode, the splice exceeded 300°C. Once the ClampStar® is installed, the splice cools down, not just back to 150°C, but more than three orders of magnitude lower, to 26.5°C as seen in the IR photo. The connector and the ClampStar® unit, continued operating at less than 50˚C for the remainder of the 2000 cycle test! It didn’t go back up to the original 150˚C of a brand new connector on a brand new conductor - with ClampStar in place the temperature of the failed connector was only 26.5˚C, and the Maximum temperature of the ClampStar was a mere 42.5˚C. The graph shows the temperature of the splice at each cycle – and the remaining results after the ClampStar® was installed!

Connectors installed on “used – weathered” conductor, WILL NOT have the longevity of a connector installed on “new – un-weathered” conductor.

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Well over 150 major utilities have taken advantage of the ClampStar® solution with many of them using it to reinforce connections in high fire-threat areas and to meet NERC and FERC N-1 contingencies. Hundreds of thousands of ClampStars have been supplied for the last 15 years to utilities all across the U.S. as well as Canada, Australia, Asia, Central America and the Middle East. These utilities have found ClampStar® to be the safest and most economical solution when it comes to hardening the grid and extending the life of aging assets.

ClampStar® is an engineered, electrical, mechanical shunt that significantly reduces whole-span wire replacement cost when installed over a failed splice, deadend, suspension clamp, or on a damaged portion of conductor to function as a permanent bypass electrical connection while maintaining tension in the conductor. ClampStar® eliminates replacement of overhead connectors and repairs damaged bare conductors through an easy, quick, and permanent fix. ClampStar® is also used to increase the performance rating of existing splices and other connectors, clamps and fittings for the purpose of increasing line ampacity that may presently be limited by such devices.

ClampStar® units are used on distribution and transmission class applications up through 765kV for: Splices, Deadends, Suspension Clamps, Damaged Conductors, Emergency / Storm Restoration, wildfire mitigation, OHSW and OPGW.

If, after reviewing the above information, you have any questions or need details, drawings or pricing, please don’t hesitate to contact us.  We would like to send one of our engineering technical specialists to meet with you and your engineers to discuss any questions you or they may have concerning any upcoming projects and share details regarding where ClampStar® could successfully be utilized. Please let us know how we can fit that into your schedule.

by CCostanzo

How To Properly Repair Damaged Conductor Caused By Spacer Dampers

Spacer dampers, designed to provide proper damping of wind-induced vibrations for bundled conductor lines, have been around for more than 50 years and like most hardware exposed to the elements, needs to be replaced at some point in time. Most often, replacing old spacer dampers is as easy as swapping out the old unit for a new one. Unfortunately, however, there will be instances where removing the old spacer damper reveals damaged conductor underneath which must be properly corrected.

As seen in the photos below, spacer dampers can create varying degrees of conductor damage grouped into 3 categories; mild abrasion, damaged strands and severely damaged strands.

Repairing conductor with damaged and/or severed strands requires a process that restores full tension and ampacity to the conductor and the best method to accomplish this is an engineered mechanical shunt.

Our CRU series (Conductor Repair Unit) is the safest and quickest permanent system to restore 100% electrical and mechanical properties to damaged conductors, on energized lines at any voltage while avoiding the need for a service interruption. As with all of our products, this unit will install in only 6-8 minutes, which obviously decreases lineman safety risk.

Available Conductor Repair Units

With corona free design and our patented "Constant Clamp Force System", transmission class CRU ClampStar® units designed to accommodate conductors sized from 447 kcmil - 2515 kcmil allows carts to easily cross over (see image below). Full tension is achieved with these ClampStar devices if the conductor core is intact, which is likely the case with spacer-damper replacement.

Watch this video below to learn the best method for repairing damaged overhead
Distribution class conductors -->

Smaller diameter conductors utilize a different style ClampStar® that can be seen by clicking here.

ClampStar units are also available for the repair of overhead splices, dead ends, OHSW and OPGW.

by CCostanzo

Reducing Wire-Down Incidents

It's a fact, the frequency of downed power lines has been increasing, especially within the last few years as much of the equipment in many power grids enters the half century and older point. According to federal data, the U.S. electric grid loses power 285 percent more frequently than in 1984, when the data collection effort on blackouts began. That’s costing American businesses as much as $150 billion per year, the DOE reported, with weather-related disruptions costing the most per event.

The root causes of the increasing number of blackouts are aging infrastructure. Also, demand for electricity has grown 10 percent over the last decade, even though there are more energy-efficient products and buildings than ever. And as Americans rely increasingly on digital devices, summers get hotter (particularly in the southern regions of the U.S.) and seasonal demand for air conditioning grows, the problem is only getting worse.

The power grid, which could be considered the largest machine on earth, was mostly built after World War II from designs, equipment, materials, and technology that primarily date back to the '60s and '70s. Its 7,000 power plants are connected by power lines that total more than 5 million miles, all managed by 3,300 utilities serving 150 million customers, according to industry group Edison Electric Institute. The whole system is valued at $876 billion.

In the last few years a tremendous emphasis supported with billions of dollars in investment has been spent on “Smart Grid” technology with the focus on detecting or monitoring problems in the grid. Unfortunately, not much of that money or effort is spent PREVENTING the problems in the first place. If the true goal is to extend the life of aging transmission and distribution equipment, the best method for doing so will be to prevent failures from occurring. There really is a lot of truth in the old adage, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.

Here are two relatively inexpensive solutions to this potentially deadly problem; When analyzing wire down incidents, our research shows us that about 1/3 are related to connector failures. This can be an in-line splice, deadend, suspension clamp, T-Tap, etc. Connectors are not designed to last forever so in order to make sure they stay in the air where they belong, it only makes sense to protect and reinforce them and the best way to do that is with an engineered mechanical and electrical shunt like ClampStar®.

My second suggestion relates to line uprates. Many presently installed high voltage transmission lines can carry more power than the existing splices and other connectors, clamps and fittings used in their construction. Shunting these connectors with ClampStar® increases their performance such that they will now exceed ANSI C119.4 Class AA, extra heavy duty standards while meeting NERC requirements.

When it comes to extending the life of overhead conductors, it’s pretty simple, ClampStar® is an engineered mechanical and electrical shunt that significantly reduces whole-span wire replacement cost when installed over a connector or on a damaged portion of conductor to function as a permanent bypass electrical connection while maintaining tension in the conductor.  ClampStar® eliminates replacement of overhead splices and repairs damaged bare conductors through an easy, quick, and permanent fix. ClampStar® is also used to increase the performance of existing splices and other connectors, clamps and fittings for the purpose of increasing line ampacity that may presently be limited by such devices.

by CCostanzo