TITLE:
Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Improving the Life Span of Wooden Power Electric Poles of Eucalyptus saligna
AUTHORS:
Joseph Voufo, Zakari Yaou, Florent Biyeme, Rolland Djomi, Richard Dadji Metangmo, Théodore Tchotang
KEYWORDS:
Electrical Power Line, Dimensioning Wooden Pole, Efforts on Pole, Pole’s Height, Method of Loading, Overload Coefficients
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Mechanical Engineering,
Vol.12 No.1,
February
28,
2022
ABSTRACT: The present work deals with reducing greenhouse gas emissions through improving the life span of wooden power electric
poles of Eucalyptus saligna. Indeed, in Sub-Saharan African countries, Cameroon
in particular, most of the power line networks are made of wooden supports and
according to the Cameroon energy distribution company, wooden poles represent
32% of the causes of death linked to the state of the network. The company’s 2019
annual report indicates that 40,000 wooden
poles were in critical condition and should
be replaced. A significant number of mechanical failures affecting these
supports have been observed. For example, on
the HVA/LV power line “D17 Nko- abang” in
Yaoundé in Cameroon, less than three years old, 10 (ten) cases of poles falling
and/or breaking, due to their mechanical loading, were observed over a period
of fewer than nine months, causing an average service stoppage for more than 11
hours and affecting an average of 3280 customers. These incidents lead to
questions about how the supports are dimensioned and what load capacities they are designed
to support. The aim of this work is, therefore, to suggest a method of dimensioning wooden poles
hence reducing green- house gas emissions due to the deforestation by reducing the number of woo- den poles at risk to be replaced on Cameroon’s electricity distribution network. And more specifically, to reduce the number of mechanical failures affecting the wooden supports observed by analyzing the
current wooden supports with their loads and to make proposals for
improving the actual dimensioning me- thods. From
the study carried out, it appears that 449 out of
845 supports, i.e., 53% needed to be replaced or monitored because
they support the nominal forces ranging from 85% to 150% of their
admissible limit and proposals have been made to improve their dimensioning.