Chapter 8

Design of Transmission Lines for Atmospheric Icing

Anand Goel

8.1 Introduction
In many parts of the world ice loading is the most important parameter inuencing the performance of overhead transmission lines, as each year there are thousands of transmission line failures worldwide caused by excessive ice loadings and utilities have to spend millions of dollars in restoration efforts. A prime example of the damages caused by atmospheric icing in recent years is the ice storm which hit Eastern Canada (Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick) and the Northeastern United States, in January 1998. The storm caused widespread damage to the power networks (Turcot 2002; Goel 2002; McClure et al. 2002). Over two million people were without electric power for weeks as 1,300 transmission towers and 35,000 distribution structures were destroyed by excessive ice loads. Restoration costs for the network in Quebec alone were over 5 billion dollars. For the design of overhead lines subjected to ice loads, of equal importance to ice loads themselves is the determination of winds occurring during ice accretions, as the ice accretions not only increase the vertical load on line conductors, they also increase the surface area exposed to the wind loads. However, of the various meteorological parameters which are considered in the design, construction and operation of transmission systems, atmospheric icing is the most difcult to estimate accurately. For a number of years, many analytical, experimental and eld studies have been carried out to improve the understanding of various ice accretion processes, the concurrent winds occurring during the ice accretions, and their impact on power network equipment. This chapter discusses impact of atmospheric icing on transmission lines and presents the salient aspects of how to design transmission lines to withstand loads and other effects caused by atmospheric icing.

Dr. A. Goel AG Engineering Innovations, 76 Pathlane Road, Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada L4B 4C7 e-mail: anandgoel@rogers.com

M. Farzaneh (ed.), Atmospheric Icing of Power Networks, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

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