Exacter, Inc. Reports Cold Winter to Produce Increase
in Freeze-Thaw, Equipment-Related Power Outages
(Columbus, Ohio) - “The Midwest and Northeast United States are experiencing an unusually cold, even record cold, winter,” states John Lauletta, CEO for Exacter, Inc. “In the coming months, electric utilities can expect a significant increase in random equipment failure due to freeze-thaw effects.”
Lauletta’s company recently completed a survey of overhead line equipment on more than one million poles, which revealed that 31% of all power outages are caused by problems occurring on just 0.8% of the poles.
“Even after the mild winters of the last two years, we saw freeze-thaw equipment damage on a cutout at a northeastern utility that showed cracking in the epoxy in July of 2007. Nine months later in April of 2008, the porcelain insulator that wasn’t replaced cracked due to freeze/thaw. And this is not uncommon,” concluded Lauletta.
According to Lauletta, freeze-thaw failures like the aforementioned cutout will be exacerbated by the severe weather this year. Problems discovered this spring will begin to trigger even more failures over the ensuing nine-to-twelve months.
Exacter believes that to be forewarned is to be forearmed, and has been sounding this alert to its existing customer base.
“The issue for utilities boils down to customer satisfaction, outage-avoidance and equipment replacement philosophies,” states Exacter Vice President Geoffrey Bibo, “Do you replace the cutout in July of ’07 at a cost of about $300 and avoid the outage, or do you just absorb the outage and replace it in an emergency, after-hours environment at a cost of $1500-$2000.”
Utilities are beginning to discover how Exacter Outage-Avoidance Technology can identify and prevent previously unavoidable equipment failure outages (1.8 million annually, making up 31% of all outages). More than 80 utilities are now using Exacter and the field results are showing a 97.8% accuracy rating for identifying failing equipment.
“Unfortunately, freeze-thaw equipment failures are something utilities will be discovering even more often in 2009,” concludes Bibo. “The good news for utilities is that using Exacter technology is a way to detect equipment problems before the outage occurs.”
For more information:
John Lauletta, CEO
Exacter, Inc.
614-880-9320