In the power industry, too many of us pretend to be someone we're not. We hide our flaws and weaknesses. Maybe we have good reasons to be paranoid. Why expose our flaws if there is a chance we will be attacked by someone clawing their way to the top?

When I came to T&D World, I decided to try a different tactic and flaunt my flaws. It's a little unorthodox, but it seems to be working so far. Because I have a few broken strands when it comes to accounting, I've linked up with people who are good with numbers. These kind folks save me hours upon hours of messing with billing and accomplishing next to nothing. I can then convert those hours to good use by tracking down neat projects and talking with interesting characters.

Each of us tends to break different strands. Your broken strand might be a missing political gene. Another person might fear public speaking. Yet another might have an inability to turn a wrench. We'd all be better off admitting our flaws and devising workarounds so we can focus on our strengths.

When it comes to utility infrastructure, we have broken strands as well. Problems that infect our system include poor grounding, deteriorating cable, systems susceptible to lightning, deteriorating breaker contacts. The list is endless. But if we look for workarounds to address our aging infrastructure and if we leverage new technology, we can get more out of our systems without sacrificing reliability.

I ran into my old buddy Tip Goodwin at a conference last year and invited him to dinner. Goodwin, a project manager at EPRI Solutions, is a great guy to know because he always has the scoop on new technologies. He mentioned that EPRI is working with member utilities to develop a device that can locate broken overhead conductor strands. The skeptic that I am, I asked him what utilities were evaluating the device. I found that participating utilities include Western Area Power Authority, Nebraska Public Power District, Tri-States G&T, Electricitie' de France, Tennessee Valley Authority, Georgia Power and New York Power Authority.

When Goodwin got around to mentioning that Jack Varner at Georgia Power was participating in field trials, my ears perked up. I know Varner personally from my days at Georgia Power. This man has a few broken strands himself. He is incapable of lying or even fudging the truth. He also has this tiny flaw of speaking his mind when he'd sometimes be better served keeping his ideas to himself. Of course, Varner has some really strong strands, too. He's the most positive guy you'll ever meet, and he is always looking for ways to leverage technology — constantly getting enmeshed in awesome projects. And this guy is not afraid to think big.

I called Varner and invited myself down to the field trial. I even resurrected my Georgia Power hard hat to wear on the job site. Once out in the field, memories came flooding back. I sometimes miss the adrenaline of trying something new, but I don't miss the heartache of explaining technology gone awry to spectators who scowl while stating, “I knew it wouldn't work.”

At the field trial, I first met with Dr. Rahmat Shoureshi, the father of this device. I still don't see how Shoureshi, dean of the school of engineering and computer science at the University of Denver, has time to mess with something as fun as this. Maybe Shoureshi's broken strand is an inability to put up with endless university politics. His battery-powered device, the EMAT (electromagnetic acoustic transducer), can be operated on energized lines. It weighs around 20 lb (9 kg) and works by sending a 400-V, 80-kHz to 110-kHz square wave pulse down the conductor. When the electromagnetic pulse hits a broken strand, a reflection is picked up by electromagnetic sensors. More broken strands mean more reflections.

By placing the EMAT on the conductor adjacent to conductor clamps, the device looks at the conductor under the clamp, where broken strands are most likely to be encountered. The waveforms are stored on the device for later analysis, but the device provides order of magnitude results to operators with three ratings: normal, minor abnormal and major abnormal. Shoureshi's post-doctoral student Sun-Wook Lim was on-site to analyze data and to correlate device response to field-inspected damage. Graduate student Naqib Hussain came out to handle Bluetooth communications with the controller, change out batteries, check on the motor-operated jaws and troubleshoot should the need arise.

Georgia Power crews had previously completed a trial on a 477-kcmil ACSR 26/7 Hawk conductor on the Fort Gaines 115-kV line. Varner informed me that the device had worked quite well on this conductor, having never recorded a false positive. The crews had taken sections of conductor from six places where the EMAT device predicted broken strands and shipped the conductor to EPRI's Haslet Texas mechanical test facility. The conductor showed varying degrees of damage. One conductor had four broken strands, another had six broken strands and yet another had 13 broken strands. The EMAT recorded major abnormal under one conductor clamp. Field crews disassembled this conductor segment and found that all the aluminum strands had one or more breaks. Crews also found discolored steel-core conductors.

These tests convinced Varner that the EMAT could predict broken strands on smaller conductors, but he wanted to be sure the device would accurately predict the condition of bigger conductors. Thus, I joined Georgia Power Transmission construction crews up near Canton, Georgia, on the Carter's Dam to Tioga section of a 230-kV line. The device was adapted with new jaws to accommodate the 1033-kcmil ACSR Curlew 54/7 conductor. Using the EMAT device, the maintenance crew was able to inspect the conductor under nine conductor clamps.

I had a chance to talk with lineman Tony Bell afterward. Bell showed me the specially designed tools the linemen would normally use to unwrap armor guard to enable them to visually inspect underlying conductor strands. He believes that the EMAT would enable utilities to inspect eight to 10 times more locations than with mechanical inspection techniques. Although these linemen had never seen the EMAT before, they had no trouble installing the device with sticks, opening or closing the jaws, or even programming the device.

Varner selected this 230-kV line because it had been operated for 15 years before dampers were installed. The line was in hilly, mountainous terrain. When the line was first constructed, experts believed aeolian vibration would occur only in flat areas with steady laminar wind flow. Today we know otherwise. When Georgia Power first discovered that wind-based vibration was causing damage to the conductor, it installed dampers on the line. Because inner steel strands carry the majority of the mechanical load, overhead ACSR (aluminum conductor steel reinforced) conductors can operate safely for many years even if some aluminum strands within the conductor have broken or sustained damage.

Of course, if the device predicts major abnormal damage, the utility should replace the bad section of conductor and inspect the removed section for mechanical damage. The utility should then feed the number of broken strands into the analytical model to improve the predictive accuracy of the device.

Once Georgia Power gains additional confidence in the EMAT, the utility will inspect the many lines that had not been protected by dampers for many years. Varner intends to look first at the 230-kV lines, starting with the North Tifton to Pine Grove line. Alabama Power, a sister company within Southern Company, intends to inspect the Gaston to Yates line, which suffered a downed conductor due to vibration damage. If sufficient funds are available, Varner will then test a series of 115-kV lines. He doesn't intend to use the device at every tower, instead focusing on areas where wind and terrain profiles that indicate vibration damage is more likely. Varner also wants to evaluate spacer dampers on 4-conductor bundles that make up the 500-kV lines built in the 1960s and 1970s. By keeping good data and repeating tests five to 10 years out, Georgia Power can determine whether additional strand damage is presently occurring.

Shoureshi first proposed the device in 1999. Progress has been slow but sure. The EMAT is now in its final phase of development. Today, the device is assembled at the University of Denver. But as participating utilities gain more confidence in the technology, it will be commercialized. As more field data becomes available, the embedded expert system of the EMAT will be fine-tuned to enhance the predictive ability of the device. Each utility can set its own damage threshold limits based on personal experiences with vibration damage and the condition of the conductor.

Of course, problems exist throughout our T&D infrastructure, not just with overhead conductor. We've seen too many utilities stick their heads in the sand when they encounter broken strands. A far better way is to invest the resources to find out how many strands are broken, to invest the time to determine what caused the breaks and to invest the intellectual capital to develop a method to mitigate the problem.