Research & Technical Content

T&D Wood Pole Performance Analytics

• Collect and analyze industry wide wood pole inspection data to better understand wood pole useful life. Through data analysis better understand the influence of various factors on pole performance. For example:

  • How do different species perform?
  • How effective are different original treatment types for a given pole species?
  • How do pole top degradation patterns differ from groundline degradation?
  • Any geographic patterns related to non-degradation damages to wood poles?
  • At what age to replace poles?
  • What are my projected capital needs for pole replacements?
  • How would changing inspection cycle length affect my risk exposure?

• To date EPRI has gathered more than 11 million wood pole inspection records from 32 companies.

Analysis of Overhead Conductor and Shield Wire Data Informs Asset Management Decisions
For overhead transmission line asset managers, a better understanding of the expected life of their conductors and shield wires would support improved, analytically based decisions about maintenance, repair, and replacement. Insights on fleet life expectancy could be derived from careful analysis of historical condition assessment and replacement data.

As part of its ongoing asset management data analytics efforts, EPRI has developed a methodology for deriving appropriate survival models using advanced statistical techniques for analyzing equipment assessments and historical replacements and applied the methodology to select overhead transmission conductor and shield wire fleets.

This tech brief highlights key findings from this research. Based on a sound analytical methodology, results of this work may help guide utilities’ asset management, maintenance and replacement decisions.

Applying Geospatial Information in Overhead Transmission Asset Management
Geospatial analysis of overhead transmission assets can be useful for understanding and predicting asset behavior. Mapping asset performance against geographic location may reveal previously unknown patterns and trends that explain historical performance and provide a basis for better forecasts of future performance, thereby improving asset management decisions. This technical brief describes the value and applications of geospatial information and spatial analytics in overhead transmission asset management. It presents potential use cases, summarizes application issues, analysis methods, and outlines future EPRI research.

Steel Structure Performance Analytics

• Collect and analyze industry wide steel structure performance data (inspection, assessment, land cover/vegetation density, geo-spatial, weather, soil etc.) to uncover insights that might help with inspection, maintenance, and replacement decisions.

• EPRI is currently analyzing data from 7,238 structures inspected over three years (also includes soil measurements)