Working on power line design introduces numerous challenges, particularly when it comes to manually calculating overhead line clearances. This process is complex, time-consuming, and prone to errors. Not only does it directly affect the safety of the public and the workers involved, but it also influences the overall efficiency and reliability of the power system. 

To simplify and streamline this process, SPIDAcalc leverages modern technology that increases system integrity and optimizes overhead financial investments. As a pole line and clearance evaluation software solution, SPIDAcalc is engineered to revolutionize your overhead power line design processes. 

 Consider the following challenges and how SPIDAcalc can help you overcome them:  

 

1. Achieving Accurate Modeling
   The first hurdle in overhead line clearances is achieving an accurate model. Your model must be a true reflection of field assets when reviewing clearances for existing pole lines or ensuring new construction designs comply with the required standards. This requires careful consideration of variables, such as pole/attachment heights and terrain field conditions. SPIDAcalc v8.0 eliminates complexity with:
   1. • Drag-and-Drop Functionality: Build an accurate model with ease using a straightforward drag-and-drop interface 
      • 3D Model Views: Visualize your model in 3D, offering a realistic perspective that helps prevent oversight

    

2.  Handling Terrain Variability
   Power lines traverse diverse terrains, from flat grounds to steep hills and valleys. Calculating maximum sag conditions over such varying landscapes can be a demanding process prone to miscalculations. SPIDAcalc v8.0 offers solutions such as:
   1. • Automated Clearance Evaluations: Real-time evaluation of at-pole, to-ground, and wire-to-wire clearances help you review results quickly and make necessary adjustments 
      • Project-Wide Terrain Model: Complements automated clearance evaluations, helping you efficiently define terrain and environment regions with differing requirements

    

3.  Navigating Weather Conditions
   Weather conditions significantly impact overhead power line clearance calculations. Different clearance rules account for wind, ice, and snow, all affecting the sag and tension of attached cables. With SPIDAcalc v8.0, this becomes more manageable with: 
   1. • Customized Clearance Rules: Allow for different scenarios, helping ensure a safe design regardless of the weather conditions

    

4.  Reducing Human Error

Human error must always be considered. Complex calculations, missed rule applications, and manual verifications can expose a system to unknown failures, resulting in unsafe conditions. SPIDAcalc can help mitigate these risks through:

1. 1. • Robust Non-linear Sag & Tension Algorithm: Ensures precise calculations to accurately model the conductor along the entire span

 

 SPIDAcalc v8.0: A Complete Solution

 

 The latest release of SPIDAcalc v8.0 is engineered to overcome these challenges and optimize your overhead power line design processes. It enhances system integrity, ensures reliable service, reduces safety concerns, and optimizes overhead financial investments. As industry needs and challenges evolve, SPIDAcalc adapts and grows, too, with new releases delivered on a consistent basis. 

 

 SPIDAcalc in Action

 How has SPIDAcalc been implemented in power line design processes? Here are several essential ways that it is making significant impacts on organizations and their bottom lines: 

1. • Adaptability and Flexibility: SPIDAcalc easily aligns with each utility’s individual needs. The software’s flexibility allows engineers to quickly design a pole line and review both loading and governing codes (NESC, CSA, and GO95), and clearances on utility infrastructure. 
   • Non-Linear Analysis and User-Friendliness: With the advent of regulatory requirements for non-linear analysis, SPIDAcalc provides a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to enter data. Coupled with a powerful finite element analysis engine, the software enables easy-to-build models with detailed output results. 
   • Enhanced Functionality and Scalability:  SPIDAcalc has helped small and large-scale utilities replace disparate spreadsheet analysis methods with a scalable, code-compliant solution. Users can model and analyze a single design in seconds or an entire pole line in minutes using SPIDA’s cloud-based analysis.
   • Streamlined Pole Analysis and Workflow Improvements: SPIDAcalc has been instrumental in streamlining pole analysis for several companies, allowing designs that may fall out of normal specifications to be approved or modified based on the results. Using trusted software enables companies to optimize processes and confidently improve their workflows for internal users and contractors. 
   • Confidence, Efficiency, and Cost-Savings: SPIDAcalc has given companies like REMC more confidence in their approach to pole design and outcomes. The user interface saves time and effort when evaluating designs. This, in turn, has allowed companies to avoid over-building or under-building designs, resulting in significant cost savings. 

SPIDAcalc: The Future of Power Line Design

 

 

Structure management with SPIDA provides a path forward so that instead of reacting to each crisis as it happens, you can build long-term strategies to achieve cost-efficiency and asset health.

WITH SPIDA, YOU CAN:

• Improve your Utility Structure Management
• Understand Risk
• Ensure Compliance
• Optimize your Resources

Get our complimentary eBook and find how you can prepare for tomorrow’s networks today and Build a Better Grid.

Gahanna, OH March 21, 2023  — SPIDA, the enterprise solution provider that helps electric utilities and telecommunications companies model, analyze, and manage overhead infrastructure assets, and ClimaTwin^®, Climate Risk Intelligence for Infrastructure Digital Twins™, is proud to announce a software-as-a-service solution purpose-built for energy infrastructure and electric utilities, driven by deep integration with SPIDA^®, a Bentley Company (NASDAQ: BSY).

Unlike other generic, climate-related applications with broad-based, top-down approaches spread across multiple verticals, ClimaTwin’s solution offers an asset-specific, bottom-up approach — designed by infrastructure professionals for infrastructure professionals. In energy infrastructure and electric utilities, owner-operators, engineers, and other stakeholders can now mitigate climate risks, assess adaptation actions, and prioritize resiliency spending for each individual utility pole, overhead line, transmission tower, or substation transformer, across thousands or millions of geographically-distributed assets in a power grid, utility network, or capital program.

ClimaTwin Co-founder and CEO Adam Omansky highlights “Now, with simple and secure integration to SPIDA, energy and utility stakeholders can perform complex analysis and gain actionable insights into future weather and climate extremes across millions of assets — visualizing and analyzing a broad spectrum of hazards, vulnerabilities, and risks over decades in the future, and hyper-localized down to the specific geolocation of each asset.”

General Manager of SPIDA, Brett Willitt explains “ClimaTwin’s deep integration with SPIDA now enables utility and telecommunication stakeholders, from owner-operators to engineers, to develop lifecycle digital twins and gain asset-specific insights into system risk and resilience to future weather and climate extremes. We’re excited to partner with ClimaTwin, their innovative solution addresses a mission-critical need for Bentley and SPIDA customers to future-proof their assets.”

About ClimaTwin

ClimaTwin^® is a leading climate risk intelligence solution for infrastructure assets and the built environment.

We empower infrastructure stakeholders to mitigate climate risks and assess adaptation actions across the total asset lifecycle. By connecting complex climate models and infrastructure digital twins, our solution enables engineers, owner-operators, and governments to aggregate, visualize, and analyze disparate datasets, revealing site-specific insights at the hyper-local scale of assets. Benefits include 5-10x near-term returns and lifetime cost-avoidance by mitigating risks to systems, services, and societies.

To learn more about climate risk intelligence for your infrastructure assets, please visit ClimaTwin here.

About SPIDA

Serving the electric and telecommunication industries since 2007, SPIDA Software’s cost-effective Structure Management System is a unique platform developed to create a digital twin of utility overhead systems and a centralized portal for the coordination of activities including joint use and engineering. SPIDA is helping our customers reduce risk, cost, and timelines as they build the electric grid and broadband networks of tomorrow.

Learn more about SPIDA here.

Come check out a presentation by SPIDA Software on Pole Loading Fundamentals on September 23rd 1:40-2:25 PM at the Embassy Suites in Frisco, Texas at the 38th Annual Engineering Conference & Exhibit Show September 21st-24th.

 

Texas Electric Cooperatives represents the interests of 76 electric cooperatives with more than 3 million members throughout the state. TEC serves its members by providing products and services that help sustain cooperative businesses in the 21st century.

Over the last few months, the SPIDA Software Support team has been busy making significant improvements to the SPIDA Support website- a complimentary resource that provides product user manuals, video tutorials, technical resources and more at the fingertips of the SPIDA user community. In addition to an enhanced and modern user interface, the new SPIDA Support site now features: 

• Enhanced navigation and dynamic searching capabilities 
• Detailed sitemaps and visibility into available content for each of the SPIDA products 
• Access to ‘top 6’ quick links featuring popular support content 
• Third-party verification reports of our analysis methodologies 
• A series of “Quick Start” videos to help new users get up to speed 

“Our user base is growing, and we are continuously seeking ways to better support our clients,” said Kyrsten Fitzgerald, Support Lead at SPIDA Software. “With the recent SPIDA Support Site updates, product documentation is now presented in a cleaner, reorganized format, and connecting with the SPIDA support team is easier than ever – getting users to the answers they are looking for more efficiently.” 

 

About SPIDA Software

Serving the electric and telecommunication industries since 2007, SPIDA Software’s cost-effective Structure Management System is a unique platform developed to create a digital twin of utility overhead systems and a centralized portal for the coordination of activities including joint use and engineering. SPIDA is helping our customers reduce risk, cost, and timelines as they build the electric grid and broadband networks of tomorrow.

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