OFF TO THE RACES - Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative

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BLUEBONNET Continued from the previous page Today, miles of poles stretch along Texas 130, sporting a different look. Bluebonnet worked with the toll-road developer and engineers on a design to reduce the need for private easements along the highway, solve problems associated with wooden poles and prepare for future growth. The new design’s aim: lessening property easements. Utilities use these strips of land to build and maintain electric, water and sewer lines. The property holder still owns the land, but utilities can access the portion designated an easement. When the Texas 130 project reached Bluebonnet’s service area, “We had to deal with massive amounts of relocation of (power) lines,” said Shawn Ely, senior engineering project coordinator. That meant acquiring easements. “We had prior experience with telling people we normally don’t pay for easements,” he said. “We got a lot of doors slammed in our faces. The easement issue is what led us to design the new pole.” Birth of an idea The new design was conceived during meetings between Bluebonnet’s planning team, the consultant engineering firm Schneider Engineering, and the toll road’s developer, CTxHC. Bluebonnet archives The new poles, shaped like the letter F, improve on the older T-shaped poles. One improvement is that the new poles overcome the problem of easements — the issue that sparked the new design, said Shawn Ely, Bluebonnet's senior engineering project coordinator, left. 18 TEXAS CO-OP POWER July 2011 BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE EDITION
By the numbers: Texas 130 project 10.8 Miles of newly designed steel poles 17 Number of underground crossings Sources Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative; North American Wood Pole Council Did you know? n Most utility poles are wood, and they are the stem of a tree that’s been harvested, shaped, treated and certified to meet standards of straightness, taper and growth rates. n Woods used for utility poles include southern yellow pine, Douglas fir, western red cedar, lodgepole pine and red pine. “We were sitting in a room basically tossing around ideas,” Ely said. “We also wanted to stretch (Bluebonnet’s) and the developer's dollar farther by investing in and installing better, stronger and longerlasting solutions for providing power up and down the toll road wherever needed.” The team contemplated “long-term and worst-case” scenarios, settling on an existing design concept that, with “some tweaking and engineering,” fit Bluebonnet’s needs. “While you probably haven’t ever seen anything like that in our system before, we solved a lot of problems with those structures,” Ely said. “The two biggest problems it solved were avoiding a lengthy and costly easement acquisition process for new lines and, also, the design allowed us to construct today for future growth and capacity.” Most utility poles are wood that is pressure-treated with a preservative. Newer poles have been made from steel, concrete or treated wood wrapped in fiberglass. But the design has changed little. Enter Bluebonnet’s new 50-foot steel poles. Typical utility poles have crossarms that BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE EDITION n The main reasons for replacing utility poles are decay, road projects, line upgrades, vehicle impact and lightning strikes. n Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative’s service area has roughly 200,000 utility poles; fewer than 600 are steel, including about 200 of the new design. n Bluebonnet inspects its poles on a 10-year cycle. look like a T, but the new poles “look like an F standing out there,” said Matthew Sturn, a Bluebonnet inspector. “And these don’t have to have braces on the ‘alley arms,’ ” which are crossarms mounted only to one side of the pole. This design, sometimes used in alleys to face away from buildings, takes up less space. The new poles “are capable of being climbed with steps … without buckets,” Sturn said. “We can insert steps on them.” Steel design The new poles are larger — 30 inches wide compared to the average 16- to 18inch older poles — so they must be buried 11.5 feet deep instead of the standard 7 feet. They are also more expensive. “The wood poles … run between $750 and $1,000 each,” Ely said. “The new steel poles run upwards of $3,000 to $4,000 apiece.” Although the new poles are pricey, they’re resistant to bugs, woodpeckers, rot and other problems associated with wood poles, so they are expected to last much longer, he said. Two of the new poles: one towering over Texas 130 near Lockhart, above, another on Texas 71 near Bastrop, left. The steel poles can last 50 years compared to wooden ones, which last about 30 years. The steel poles weigh about 650 pounds compared to wooden poles, which tip the scales at 1,000 pounds. “Not only does the steel versus wood part have its obvious advantages – strength, durability, lifespan, etc. — the poles were designed to support dual circuits of the largest conductor we will ever use,” Ely said. So, Bluebonnet can upgrade existing infrastructure instead of replacing poles or moving them closer to support heavier lines. Because the new poles can be accessed from the toll road’s right-of-way instead of private property, there is less impact to coop members. “This design may lend itself to solve problems for us in the future where obtaining easements may be difficult,” Ely said, “or where space restrictions just don’t allow for standard construction.” n July 2011 TEXAS CO-OP POWER 19 BLUEBONNET
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Page 5 and 6: POWERtalk Letters from Texas Co-op
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Page 13 and 14: Customer Feedback Guaranteed Result
Page 15 and 16: Army intelligence analyst and comba
Page 17: ONLINE From wood to steel After mor
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Page 25 and 26: BY MARTHA DEERINGER The Legislature
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