Tambo power reliability project nearing completion

Tambo-power

A $500,000 project being undertaken by Ergon to improve power reliability to the Central West Queensland town of Tambo has been completed.

General manager customer delivery Steve Leighton said, to date, around 180 centre post insulators have been installed on concrete poles and more than 100 raiser brackets installed on wooden poles on the line.

“The project will reduce the instances of bird strikes on the main supply line from Blackall that have been the main cause of these intermittent trips on the system,” he said.

The project is designed to address the number of short duration interruptions that have affected the community for some time.

In the main, large wingspan bird such as plane turkeys have been the cause, where they fly into the lines and clash them together causing inbuilt protection on the high-voltage network to operate. The protection equipment is designed to operate in this manner to avoid major damage to the network and ensure public safety.

“Crews working on the project have reported evidence of numerous bird strikes on the line in about 20 different locations,” Mr Leighton said.

The work has been done using a combination of live line work methods and planned outage measures.

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