For Tampa Electric team members, it’s exciting to bring 99.9 percent reliability to our nearly 730,000 customers. The important things in life that our power makes possible can be exciting indeed. Tangentially, helicopters are kind of exciting too.
Conducting helicopter inspections of our 1,300 miles of transmission lines?
Not so exciting. Boring, in fact – and that’s the idea.
“We always hope for boring, uninteresting data and flights as the helicopter inspections progress – that means the system is running like it’s supposed to,” said Danny Allen, engineer II with Transmissions Operations and the one who coordinates the inspections on behalf of Tampa Electric. “If we do find something that we need to fix or study further, we’re well equipped to do that quickly and efficiently with safety and reliability as our top priorities.”
This year’s inspection, which happens annually, started in mid-August and will continue into September. With mounted infrared cameras, the helicopter will capture images of our entire system, which includes approximately 25,600 structures and 196 circuits in addition to the aforementioned 1,300 miles of transmission lines. A comprehensive annual inspection of our above-ground infrastructure ties into the effort and covers about one-eighth of that infrastructure.
“The [Haverfield] helicopter crew and the contractors with Hot/Shot Infrared Inspections are outstanding, professional and great to work with; they can usually cover between 100 to 200 structures a day, which ends up having the actual inspection take anywhere from 17 to 30 working days, depending on weather conditions,” Allen said.
Issues the inspections might uncover include things you would probably expect – pole components like insulators, clamps and wires in need of replacement as they reach the end of their natural lifespan. We may also see trees growing too close to power lines; when that happens, we submit orders to have the trees trimmed in ways that protect their health and provide sufficient clearance to our lines (you can let us know if you see trees near power lines too – never try to trim them yourself).
And while TECO counts bird- and nature-lovers of all kinds among its team members, woodpeckers can do significant damage to our poles.
“Tampa Electric is cycling into the system woodpecker-proof poles – but for wooden poles we haven’t replaced yet, the birds can do a lot of damage,” Allen said. “That and all of the needs that the inspections identify go into our annual storm-hardening efforts, which we report to the Public Service Commission; it’s part of how we prepare year-round for hurricane season and to ensure we provide reliable service for our customers.”
Sometimes TECO team members go up in the helicopters to help the contractors – often just the pilot, a lineman and a data recorder – navigate over our system. The helicopter inspections start about 8 a.m. and hover from 30 to 300 feet in the air. In each case, no news is good news. Boring flights are good flights. And boring reliability is exactly what everyone wants – with team members like Danny Allen, helicopter inspections and the hard work we do daily to make it happen.
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