Revolutionizing Concrete Pole Maintenance

Context

At Elia Group, innovation is not just a buzzword: it’s a state of mind that drives us to improve and find solutions from outside of our company, too. By forming partnerships, looking at what's being done in incubators and collaborating with start-ups, we are able to stay at the cutting edge of technology.  

GridWrap is a perfect example of this. The start-up took part in an incubator – the ‘Incubatenergy labs programme’ organised by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) – where it was spotted by our Innovation Team.

Approach

Imagine drastically reducing the downtime required for essential maintenance, slashing costs, dramatically extending the lifespan of critical infrastructure, and enhancing sustainability—all while adhering to stringent regulatory limits. This vision is now within reach, thanks to the latest innovation in the field of utility pole management.

The current lifetime of our concrete poles is about 70 years. Currently, if a pole is damaged, we always replace it, but one of the objectives, becoming more and more crucial is to reduce outage for maintenance as much as possible. There are high costs involved for risk mitigation measures and an outage time of approximately 1 week is normally required for replacements. Furthermore, in the South of Belgium, where the majority of concrete pole lines are, local regulations limit pole replacements to: -Yearly max 5 % of the line ; - On 4 year base 20 % of the line. The Objective therefore is to avoid replacing complete poles 1 by 1 as much as possible.
 
As part of of EPRI's Incubate Energy labs membership, we were happy to discover GridWrap. GridWrap offers a patented composite material, which reinforces and restores the structural integrity of utility poles. This technology is applied by wrapping the composite material around existing poles, significantly extending their lifespan and improving their resilience. The process is quick, reliable and allows for on-site application, eliminating the need for extensive downtimes associated with pole replacements.Have you already seen our concrete poles with their 'winter coat' on? Since a few weeks  GridWrap, Inc., is wrapping a few of our poles as a pilot project. This project demonstrates the power of close cooperation between our Innovation, Asset Management and Quality Control departments. 

Instead of replacing the poles, we can now apply patented composite material to existing infrastructure to extend its lifetime  and improve its resilience without any downtime. This  solution is also part of our circular, sustainability best practices, which enable us to improve the management of our assets, decreasing our raw material consumption and waste production and reducing the frequency of necessary interventions. How about a win-win situation?

Find out how in the following video:

Partners