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Amokabel’s innovative New Generation Covered Conductor reaches more than 1 million metres delivered in Australia since 2020. That means many communities now have a safer, more resilient and reliable power supply as a result.
Amokabel is proud to announce that its New Generation Covered Conductor solution has reached the milestone of more than 1 million metres delivered to Australia since 2020. This achievement represents a major step forward in the resilience, reliability, and safety of Australian overhead distribution networks.
Developed following the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, New Generation Covered Conductor (NGCC) from Amokabel uses advances in materials technology to produce a covered conductor that is uniquely engineered for Australian conditions.
NGCC is much lighter and stronger than other types of covered conductor that have previously been used in Australia (for example CCT) and is much easier to install. The fact that it is lighter and stronger allows it to be retrofitted to most existing networks without the need for expensive inter-poling or other infrastructure upgrades, which are often required when using other solutions such as CCT. The addition of the unique steel (ACS) covered conductor product enables the replacement of conductors where traditionally steel wire has been used (for example in SWER applications). As a result of the materials design, the Amokabel NGCC products allow much longer spans than have previously been possible with traditional covered conductor.
Amokabel’s New Generation Covered Conductor (NGCC) has been widely used overseas for many years but is relatively new in the Australian market. Australia poses unique challenges for Covered Conductor in terms of the physical environment and climate change is only exacerbating those challenges. Products developed for European or American applications are designed for different conditions that are typically not as demanding as those experienced by Covered Conductors in Australia. Amokabel’s superior design and quality have been recognised by many countries, including India where approximately seven million metres of Amokabel Covered Conductor have been delivered in the last few years alone. In a world first, Amokabel recently delivered 110kV Covered Conductor to India.
Due to the unique operating environment in Australia, the design brief from Australia for Amokabel’s NGCC was extensive and covered key areas such as high temperature fluctuations, extreme UV resistance, resistance to salt spray and industrial contaminants, abrasion resistance, as well as the ability for the products to be easily installed and maintained in remote locations. It also needed to be highly cost effective in order to reduce conductor replacement costs and be suitable for replacement of bare wire in any application, not just high bushfire risk areas.
In addition to the conductor itself, Amokabel cooperated with European distribution specialist, ENSTO, to ensure that a complete covered system solution is achieved. This reduces the risk of fire starts by a staggering 98% (according to CSIRO research) compared to bare wire and ensures that vegetation and our native wildlife are no longer the unwitting causes of devastating bushfires and unnecessary power outages.
An added benefit is that the accessories are very easy to use, ensuring that a minimum amount of training for line crews is required and that the installation time for NGCC is basically the same as for ordinary bare wire. As a key point of difference to traditional conductor supply, Amokabel provides a complete suite of installation documentation and training for the full solution, so networks can easily adapt and install NGCC without having to first work out how to install it.
As part of the commitment by Amokabel to the Australian networks, Amokabel acquired a cable manufacturing business in Sydney in 2022, with the long-term goal of manufacturing covered conductor in Australia.
Amokabel managing director Australia Steve Rutland said, “Amokabel’s new generation covered conductor solution is a uniquely Australian product that has enormous potential to reduce bushfire risk and increase the safety, reliability and resilience of our distribution networks here in Australia in an affordable manner.
“Amokabel believes in being local and where many companies are moving manufacturing offshore, we are committed to providing better service to our customers by bringing manufacturing to Australia and creating jobs here in Australia. Amokabel’s motto is ‘Cable for Life’, and so we are also committed to bringing products to Australia that not only save lives and improve life quality by providing a reliable power supply, but which are also designed and produced in an environmentally sustainable way.
“Our factory in Sweden is unique in that it currently produces its own renewable energy through a combination of wind, water and solar energy and our ambition is to be able to do the same thing here in Australia. We already use 100% renewable energy at our factory here and are continually working to improve our environmental impact.”
As a result of innovations in design and the extensive testing regime undertaken in Australia, Amokabel’s NGCC offers a paradigm shift in overhead conductor technology in Australia. It is the most cost-effective way to increase network resilience, reliability and safety for Australian networks. Recent projects undertaken in Australia indicated that NGCC was up to 10 times cheaper to install than undergrounding, with basically the same level of safety achieved.
Given the increasing number of extreme weather events, Australian networks need an economical way to increase resilience and reliability and Amokabel’s NGCC solution is the only cost-effective solution available that can clearly meet both the reliability and affordability expectations of networks, regulators and customers.
No other commercially available technology can compete in terms of its cost effectiveness and overall risk reduction. This cost effectiveness has been confirmed by independent government research. A report from Infrastructure Victoria in February 2024, aptly named Weathering the storm, found that insulated overhead conductors were the only solution that delivered a positive return on investment.
So far Amokabel’s NGCC has been rolled out in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, and Western Australia as more and more networks discover the benefits of working with Amokabel and New Generation Covered Conductor. Contact Amokabel Australia at enquiries.au@amokabel.com to find out more about how NGCC can help your network achieve better resilience, reliability and safety.
