Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has constituted a technical committee for formalizing standard technical specifications for steel pole-type structures.
The committee will function under the chairmanship of Chief Engineer (Power System Engineering & Technology Development), CEA.
The committee comprises members from steel pole manufacturers, Central Power Research Institute, state electricity regulatory commissions, power utilities, etc.
The objective of the committee is to prepare standard technical specification for steel pole type structures considering the wide acceptance of steel tubular poles as an alternative to lattice structures, by Indian utilities.
In some applications, steel pole structures prove better alternatives to lattice towers due to less geographical footprint, lower right-of-way (RoW), better aesthetics and higher reliability under extreme weather conditions. For instance, steel pole structures are known to show smaller bending movement at the base, even under heavy load conditions.
Currently, there are no national standards covering design and erection of steel pole-type transmission towers.
The advantage
A note by CEA says that the standardization will help power transmission utilities, transmission service providers as well as manufacturers to get products of similar quality and reliability. Besides, CEA avers that due to the subject standardization, product quality will be uniform also resulting in faster delivery.
Draft standards
Based on various meetings held by the technical committee and inputs received from various stakeholders, the draft standard technical specification has been prepared. (This draft is available on CEA’s website.)
CEA now invites comments and inputs from stakeholders on the draft standards, so as to reach CEA by May 9, 2021. Interested stakeholders may write in to ce-psetd@gov.in
(Featured photograph, sourced from Bajaj Electricals Ltd, is for illustration only)
