Experience with transmission wood pole inspection, failures and replacements

Summary form only given. For many utilities, the pole inventory ads up to the highest budget line item to replace. Some utilities face an enormous amount of poles approaching 60-70 years of life. The question is whether this is end-of-life and how many will break at the same time. Of course, deterioration is not only a function of age and pole breakage due to deterioration of wood fiber strength is almost unheard of. Mostly, because the pole may be held up due to the lines and the two neighboring poles. However, the uncertainty in this area is high and liabilities may be high as well. This combination led Santee Cooper to create ways to assess the overall condition, to predict the future pole performance enabling planning of pro-active measures. In this panel we discuss failure modes, the behavior of different models, treatments, a statistical analysis of 3 years worth of inspection and treatment data and pro-active replacement strategies