Western Power makes major advances in wood pole management

Release Date: 10 June 2009

Western Power has made major improvements over the previous 18 months in wood pole management.  Pole top fires have been reduced by 60 per cent and the number of unserviceable poles replaced has been increased by 100 per cent.

Western Power has significantly improved all of the major indicators for the health of its wood pole population.

In response to a recently released Energy Safety report titled '2008 Distribution Wood Pole Audit Review' Western Power pointed to substantial improvements which have been made since the report was compiled and not acknowledged in Energy Safety's media release.

Western Power has decreased in the previous year the number of unassisted pole failures by over 20 per cent and increased the number of poles reinforced by 30 per cent.

In its latest submission to the regulator for funding, Western Power has sought to replace or remove 22,500 poles based on their condition and 11,500 poles from various programs, including the state undergrounding program, regional power improvement program, targeted reliability and maintenance programs, as well as 34,000 pole reinforcements.

In total, nearly 70,000 wood poles will be addressed in the next three years, which is significantly above the volumes that other Australian utilities are operating at.  

Western Power has also instituted other enhancements in its overall wood pole management system including:

• Enhanced wood pole serviceability criteria and improvements in inspection methods in line with Australian  best practices
• Enhanced Quality Assurance processes, and
• Ongoing research into alternative inspection methods.

Western Power refutes a claim in the Energy Safety report questioning the reliability of its pole data.  Pole data is stored in Western Power's corporate asset data bases and is collected and stored in a similar way to other utilities around Australia.

Western Power disagrees with Energy Safety's figure on the number of poles replaced annually.  Western Power replaced 5094 poles in 2006/07, 6070 poles in 2007/08 and this year it will replace in the order of 9,000 wood poles, in stark contrast to the 2,000-3,000 quoted by Energy Safety.

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