Easy to use systems to promptly diagnose the health condition of Utility Poles and Supports

How can we at Enel Grids better ensure our operators are safe when working at height? Supporting our people with a reliable, objective, quantitative method for measuring pole and support condition will help keep operators safe and improve network management. We invite your proposals for effective, easy-to-use, non-invasive systems that can benefit our operators globally.

Do you have a solution, technology, or method for an objective and fast health check?

This is an electronic Request-for-Partners (eRFP) Challenge; the Solver will need to submit a written proposal to be evaluated by the Seeker with the goal of establishing a collaborative partnership.

THE CHALLENGE

Enel Grids is searching for proposals that offer a solution that can provide an objective and fast health check of a pole/support, to be added to the current visual inspection.

Current practices are qualitative and subjective, depending on tester experience and sensibility. Your reliable, quantitative and objective measurement will help keep operators safe and improve network management.

This test and health check must be non-invasive, and could be based on diagnostic technologies of any kind. The scope of innovation in your solution and its universal potential is important - your solution could use physical, mechanical, thermographic, ultrasonic, magnetoscopic, hygrometric diagnostics, a combined approach, or any other relevant and successful.

The inspection approach and its conditions change dependent on the type of pole/support, their material, and then on their specific dynamics of failure. This also will have to take into account other factors: presence/absence of a foundation block, depth of penetration into the ground, the type of soil itself.

Ideally, your proposed solution will also allow for the recording and reporting of data, and including a connection to a database. This will help prepare for future health checks and provide more opportunity for future analysis and program work.

SOLUTION REQUIREMENTS 

In general, the solution needs to satisfy the following must-have requirements:

• Effectiveness of checking the health of pole/support whenever this is required;
• Not impair the pole/support integrity, stability, or create other/further risk situations;
• Be easy and fast to be deployed or installed on the pole/support, and also non-invasive;
• Be universal as far as possible, i.e. flexible to use on poles/supports of different materials, sizes, kind; solutions for only one type of material will also be considered;
• Easily transportable by users and company fleet;
• Be user-friendly in order for users to take a quick decision;
• Require minimum maintenance;
• Be easy to implement, both in time and distribution;
• Be compliant with current normative of the countries of the Enel group or be possible to adapt to local normative with a limited effort.

Nice-to-have requirements:

• Be able to record the check results for reporting purposes, and also allow remote recording in a database.

Contact / source: Safety solutions for poles and supports | Open Innovability | Open Innovability (enel.com)