The team at the live demonstration in Gainesville!

This week, LineTech got the opportunity to witness a live demonstration of how transmission lines are currently tensed and sagged. One of our liaison engineers, Justin, and lineman chief, John, were gracious enough to travel to Gainesville to demonstrate the process and answer our questions. The demonstration was incredibly beneficial to the team as it offered a visual to the process we are trying to automate and allowed us to see flaws in our current design. The team was able to simulate being a lineman, putting on the heavy duty gloves and working the hand ratchet along the makeshift conductor line.

Using the gained information from the demonstration, we went back to our PDR to review updates that needed to be implemented. One of the main points that needed to be added included a feature that would loosen the transmission line instead of only tensioning it. The team looked into reversible winches and used that theory to include a ratchet and friction brake mechanism. Working together and with out coach, changes were made to the PDR document and presentation.

Looking to the future, we are traveling to Venice, FL on Monday to give the PDR presentation to our liaisons and other FPL employees. We are looking forward to meeting everyone in person and presenting our work thus far. Once the presentation is complete, we will await approval of our current concept, and if everything goes smoothly, we will begin the prototyping process.