Manitoba Hydro De-Icing Power Lines Techniques
Watch how Manitoba Hydro crews de-ice lines by melting, rolling, and smacking ice and hoarfrost off. De-icing prevents outages, damage, and public safety hazards.Ice weight can put a lot of stress on power lines and damage equipment. Snow, rain, or freezing rain can also create conditions to start pole fires.
source/image(PrtSc): Manitoba Hydro
The ice is removed by crews as quickly as possible to prevent damage and loss of power. Ice melting operations sometimes requires the utility to shut off power to certain customers anywhere from one to six hours.Read more: Manitoba Hydro
A controlled short-circuit is placed at one end of a line. The current flow creates a temperature increase that heats up the line and melts the ice.
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A 2 crews of 3 to 4 people each (one crew working outside on the equipment and the other crew working in a control room), we can melt the ice off 30 to 50 km of line in about 3 hours, often with no customer outages.
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