When it comes to weather forecasts, freezing rain is an electric utility's worst nightmare. Accumulating ice on overhead power lines and tree limbs often leads to costly destruction and power outages. Add wind to the icy weather, and overhead lines can begin to gallop — bouncing up and down, snapping cross arms and insulators. Linemen have tried in vain to beat the ice off lines, but sunshine and warmer temperatures have been the only effective way to remove ice.

Severe storms often make it difficult for linemen to get a good night's rest. For example, whenever Tim Ailey, a lineman for Gilman, Ameren Illinois, hears about ice in the forecast, he lies awake wondering when the phone is going to ring, calling him in to work. Ailey's fitful sleep, however, yielded an inspiration that could change the way the industry tackles ice.

“I sat bolt upright in a 90-degree angle in bed one night and said, ‘I've got it!’” Ailey said. “I wrote down my thoughts right then and there.”

That inspiration, which came to Ailey in 2008, led to three years of perspiration to develop a simple invention that strips ice off overhead lines quickly, safely and efficiently.

Ailey's Ice Buster, for which he has a patent pending, is an aluminum roller that attaches to a lineman's insulated extendo-stick. Linemen simply hang the roller on the line and start walking. Ailey said the device will remove the ice as fast as a lineman can walk safely.

To use the product, linemen rotate the stick in their hands to either the right or the left. They then let the wire go through the roller at an angle, allowing the leading sidewall chamfer to contact the ice. The trailing chamfer then ejects the ice, and the radius in the center of the roller cleans what's left behind.

Ailey, who worked in a machine shop before becoming a lineman, developed the Ice Buster exclusively on his own time, with his own equipment, on his Iroquois County farm. He bought a slug of aluminum and went to work shaping his vision on a World War II-vintage lathe in his basement.

He said he hails from a long line of hardworking tinkerers who enjoy solving problems, studying things and looking for ways to improve them.

“When I get an idea in my head, I'm pretty bullheaded,” he said. “I stick with it until I can find a solution for it.”

Ailey tested his prototype on the barn lot of his farm. He hung guy wire between two trees and, with the temperature and wind just right, sprayed mist from his garden hose onto the wire until it stuck as ice.

“It took a couple of winters to work the bugs out it, but the trial-and-error has paid off,” he said. “I believe I'm onto something that could change the way the industry looks at ice.”

Mark Harbaugh, manager, Division IV, Ameren Illinois agrees. He was Ailey's first customer, ordering 10 Ice Busters.

“Whenever you start talking about ice and galloping, you're breaking cross arms, you're breaking conductors, you're breaking poles and you're talking about a large expense,” Harbaugh said. “If we can avoid a single one of those incidents, we've paid for this tool immediately. So it's not only Ameren, but all of the utilities across the Midwest through the ice belt that can find a real usefulness for this tool.”

Ailey's Ice Buster sells for $375. His son, Will, at age 15, completed the technical drawings that are on file at the U.S. Patent Office. His wife, Tina, and other children, Molly and Andrew, have spent hours stuffing mailers to market the product. Ailey hopes the Ice Buster will help his children realize their college dreams. He's using vacation time to market his invention.

“I had one gentleman who I spoke with at a co-op in Indiana that said the price of this device is less than what they ruin in switch sticks and time spent setting up a truck,” Ailey said. “Every lineman that's seen it says they want it.”

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Keith Anderson (kanderson3@ameren.com) is the supervisor of Communication Services for Ameren. For more information and to see a video, visit www.theicebuster.com.