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The Portable Pole: Innovation on Wheels

Recently, our Millsboro, Del. crews responded to a motor vehicle accident and were able to reduce what typically would have been a three-hour service interruption to just 19 minutes with a new, innovative technology. The accident damaged a utility pole and interrupted service for 2,300 customers. When crews arrived, they were able to use a portable pole to temporarily install overhead power lines next to the broken pole. This allowed them to almost immediately restore service while they made long-term repairs and installed a new utility pole in the ground.

Motor vehicle accidents involving our utility poles can impact our customers’ energy service. We’re always looking for innovative ways to improve service and reduce the length of outages that occur. The portable pole is doing just that.

“A pole hit during an accident removes the support for our overhead power lines and can require lengthy repairs,” said Jim Cullin, Delmarva Power District Operations manager. “When making repairs, our focus is on the safety of our crews and the general public, while we work to efficiently restore service. The portable pole allows our crews to maintain our focus on safety while reducing the duration of any given service outage for our customers.”

Innovative technologies allow us to better serve our customers. Whether it’s using new technologies in the field like portable poles or data analyses behind the scenes to find weak points in our system, we are always working to enhance reliability and improve service for our customers. The portable pole is a great addition to our toolkit for addressing customer needs. We will be looking to add more of these poles in the near future to help our crews continue to safely and quickly restore service to customers following outages.