The destruction and service interruptions caused during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 brought national attention to the resiliency of the electric grid and telecommunication systems. The Department of Energy, the Office of Electric Reliability, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, among others, are looking at developing resiliency metrics for system performance in major weather events.System resiliency for overhead electric and telecom lines is explained as the ability of a system to withstand a major storm and minimize service interruptions along with how quickly service is restored. Many factors contribute to system resiliency, including system monitoring and communications, sectionalizing, redundancy, overall utility storm preparedness, and many others. Another factor-the structural resiliency of the wood poles that support overhead lines-is often overlooked.However, data and experience indicate that in major storm events, wood pole structural resiliency has a direct impact on the number of service outages, the cost of restoration, and the time of restoration. Every time a wood pole fails in a storm, the time and cost of restoration increases dramatically and more customers are likely to be without service. The lower the structural resiliency of an overhead system, the more likely it is to have increased pole failures, time of restoration, and cost of restoration.
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