Steel utility poles: advantages and applications

Steel utility poles, which are designed and manufactured to be equivalent in load carrying capacity to wood poles under National Electrical Safety Code (NESC) Grade “B” criteria, offer numerous advantages over other pole materials such as wood, concrete, and fiberglass. Steel distribution pole structures can also be installed in a wide range of utility applications. The advantages of steel distribution poles include: design flexibility, high strength, relatively light weight, long life, factory pre-drilling, reduced maintenance costs, predictability and enhanced reliability, no damage due to woodpeckers, pole rot, or fires, no catastrophic or domino effect failures, aesthetically pleasing, environmentally friendly, manufactured from recycled steel, and superior life cycle costs. Since steel distribution poles are designed to be “wood pole equivalents”, they can be utilized in virtually any single pole or H-Frame application where wood poles of the same class could be used. Typical applications include tangent poles, guyed or unguyed angle, corner, and dead-end structures, transformer poles, riser poles, and switch structures