TRANSMISSION & DISTRIBUTION POWER LINE & CABLE DESIGN

POWER LINE DESIGN OVERVIEW

APD completed more than 5000km of Line Engineering in the past financial year. We are one of Australia’s leading power line engineering companies with over 100 overhead and underground line design engineers across Australia and New Zealand.

At APD, we have full in-house capability, with our team consisting of Electrical, Mechanical, Civil & Structural Engineers supported by Designers, Draftspersons and Surveyors.

We are experienced in providing overhead & underground line & cable detailed design from 240V to 500kV. Our Lines & Cables team is accredited with every major utility across Australia and specialises in projects/programs for the utility, mining, renewable, defence and private sectors.

APD’s technical experience provides significant additional value to our clients by delivering optimised engineering solutions for renewable solar/wind/hydrogen connections, whether they require a new line extension or an augmentation to an existing feeder.

TRANSMISSION & DISTRIBUTION POWER LINE ENGINEERING

Power Line and Cable Design APD’s power line engineering services include underground and overhead carrier and hardware replacement for the voltage range 415V to 330kV, for new and off-set line builds, power line relocations and network major reinforcements applying both Limit State and Working Stress Design methods.

As a first principles engineering company, APD have developed efficient procedures to ensure engineering solutions are compliant, cost effective and practical to build, whilst still not compromising on quality.

APD designers have sound knowledge of the fundamental engineering power line design principles and of the standards that underpin the designs including AS/NZ7000 and AS/NZ2067. Our resources are trained with the latest power line profiling application software including PLS-CADD, CATAN and Poles ‘n’ Wires and have extensive experience working with various terrains, structure and pole types including wood, steel and concrete. APD are a National supplier of Power Line Engineering Services.

The key engineering outputs include:

Line route and profile layout drawings
Pole/tower and cable schedules
Stringing tables
Structure and foundation design
Assembly details
Pole earthing detail
Pole drilling detail
Single line diagrams

INTEGRATED & ACCELERATED SOLUTIONS

APD are capable of integrating any line to substation arrangement, resolve and complete all line earthing design as well as power systems study in order to provide a one stop electrical shop solution for any terrain or scenario. APD offer full end-to-end solution for Substation engineering and can provide an integrated line to substation connection, including testing and commissioning.

Our designs are strong on quality, delivery and with our experience we can predefine and pre-order significant components of materials prior to detailed designs being completed. This allows us to provide an accelerated design and construction schedule and provide smooth delivery solution.

POWER LINE ROUTE SELECTION

APD can assist with the concept line route selection through conductor and standards selection, identify the general arrangements and hence required transmission or distribution line corridors.

We also investigate and mitigate any existing utilities, environmental, earthing (EPR/LFI) related issues, land owner and 3rd party approvals to ensure the line route selected first time is 100% accurate and practical to build.

PRE-TENDER ASSISTANCE

APD provides full tender preparation assistance such as structures, conductor and cable selections, pole and material quantities, and easement and corridor widths to ensure accurate scope definition for budget cost estimating.

DESIGN - CONSTRUCTION - MAINTENANCE

APD’s Design, Construction and Maintenance (DCM) service closes the loop between standards, theory and practice to assess power line regulatory compliance.

The process and methodology developed by APD involves collection of in-situ power line structure, conductor and clearance data using specialised field measuring equipment and the development of a reverse engineered network model that enables simulations to be run.

The simulation results are subsequently compared against power line compliance parameters from the appropriate standards and original design drawing(s) to identify non-conforming structures and conductor.

This service is particularly useful in identifying power lines susceptible to failure, providing the asset manager with information to:

Make prudent capital investment decisions.
Mitigate network failure risk.
Improve network reliability and safety

This service has been adopted by utilities across Australia to assess line compliance in bushfire prone areas and to verify post-construction the compliance of the reconstructed network following a bushfire.

LIDAR NETWORK SURVEY

APD’s power line engineering team utilise a vehicle mount Lidar point cloud data collection system as a tool to assist with assessment of existing overhead network. The vehicle network survey provides continuous imaging of the network while capturing point cloud survey data. The imaging data collected can be utilised for a visual and recorded inspection of the power line.

Post site visit data processing can overlay the point cloud survey data to the image allowing the following key measurements from the images:

Pole Heights
Attachment height
Ground clearances
Vegetation clearances
Material Sizes

APD utilises the point cloud survey data to complete a full power line compliance assessment by importing the survey data to either Catan or PLS CADD and recreating a model of the existing network. The models can then create additional scenarios to complete the following assessments: