Even more power upgrades to reduce fire risk for Bendigo region

This year, Powercor collaborated with Groundline Engineering and Covered Conductor Solutions to install new tech that reduces fire risk by 98%. 

Powercor is an electricity supplier in Bendigo, an extreme fire risk area in Australia. Their Bushfire Mitigation Program invests millions each year to ensure that network assets and customers are protected as much as possible against the risk of bushfires.This includes an extensive program that manages vegetation around power lines, thorough asset inspection and maintenance programs, alongside helping customers manage any privately owned overhead electric lines.

As part of the program, this year Powercor collaborated with Groundline Engineering and Covered Conductor Solutions on a $4.2million program to install covered conductor technology, which has seen 16km of powerline now replaced. Covered conductors are overhead power lines with an insulated covering around the wires, they dramatically increase the safety and reliability of powerlines, with a fire risk reduction rating of more than 98% compared to bare-wire lines. 

This technology allows fire risk prevention measures to be rolled out much faster and more efficiently than methods such as undergrounding. Bare-wire can be replaced by Covered Conductor 5 times faster than burying lines and uses significantly less pole infrastructure than alternatives like using aerial line bundling for preventing shorting and grounding.

Powercor Manager Network Assurance Dene Ward says “This technology is showing a lot of promise and avoids some of the delays we encounter with undergrounding...”

Global experts in utilities asset management, Groundline Engineering and Covered Conductor Solutions provided technical support to make sure the rollout maintained velocity at scale. This covered anything from design to network integration to infrastructure, and made sure the crews on the ground were confident and able to maximise the mileage of line hoisted. 

For more information on this project, or to request a Covered Conductor Solutions information pack, get in touch here. 

Read the full article on the Powercor covered conductor roll out here.