The use of easily installed Breakaway Power line Connectors located at the start and end on every elevated power pole would allow the wiring to disconnect whenever power lines may be struck by the force of a falling tree or limb. A Storm like Hurricane Sandy which produced unprecedented power line damage causing many homeowners and business to have their power Interrupted for long periods of time. In some cases power was inoperable for more than 11 days. There are many crews crossing our County trying to affect repairs in a timely manner.
The same hurricane with breakaway connectors on our power lines could cause much less damage and very little interruption of service. The then simple repairs could be done in every case in a few short minutes vs what we have seen during our recent storm. The Technology is currently employed by many Power Service Providers or Utilities in Hurricane areas of Florida.
During a storm when a limb or tree comes in contact with a power line the line would fall to the ground intact and the repair crew would only need to slide the wire with connectors at each end out from under the tree, go up to the connection point on the power line in their bucket truck and replug in both sides like a homeowner would plug in an extension cord. In every case the power customers would be back up and running in 15 minutes or less. In addition the repair lineman would have much less safety risk in the installation even with live wires as they would not be exposed to power any more than a homeowner is when plugging in his extension cord at home. It’s hard to understand why this easy fix has not been in use everywhere elevated lines and tree’s exist.This simple technology should be employed. The cost of power restoration from a storm of the size of Hurricane Sandy will be staggering and felt in future rises in Utility Bills. These costs would go way down if some thought and planning went into upgrading infrastructure. Nikola Tesla proved the current technolgy worked in the late 1890’s you would think some product evolution would be in order.
Below is a link to one manufactures power point where the process is detailed and explained in simple terms. There are others making products for this very application.
http://www.slideserve.com/september/new-product-overview-homac-storm-safe-connector-systems-presented-by-roy-jazowski-director-of-rd-mark-hamm