The escalating frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are driving significant investments in hardening and increasing the resilience of power distribution lines globally. Key strategies include:

• Vegetation Management: Aggressive and consistent tree trimming and removal of hazardous vegetation near power lines are crucial to prevent contact, which is a leading cause of outages and wildfire ignition. New techniques include LiDAR for precise clearance mapping and targeted removal.

• Stronger Poles and Wires: Replacing older wooden poles with more robust materials like steel, concrete, or composite poles, and upgrading conductors to more resilient types (e.g., those with higher tensile strength) that can withstand stronger winds, ice loads, and extreme temperatures.

• Strategic undergrounding: While expensive, selectively moving overhead distribution lines underground in high-risk areas (e.g., dense urban areas, wildfire-prone zones, or areas with frequent hurricane impacts) provides maximum protection from weather-related damage and visual impact. Our company offers comprehensive underground cable laying equipment for such projects.

• Automated Grid Devices: Deploying smart reclosers, sectionalizers, and fault current indicators that can quickly detect, isolate, and restore power to unaffected sections of the grid during a fault, minimizing the impact of an outage.

• Microgrids and Distributed Energy Resources (DERs): Developing localized microgrids (often powered by renewables and battery storage) that can disconnect from the main grid and operate independently during an outage, providing resilient power to critical facilities or communities.

• Enhanced Inspection Technologies: Utilizing drones with thermal and LiDAR cameras to identify potential weaknesses (e.g., overheating components, weakened poles, subtle vegetation encroachment) before a weather event turns them into an outage.

Whether through robust overhead stringing solutions or advanced underground cable laying equipment, our products are integral to building the resilient distribution infrastructure needed to withstand a changing climate.