Southern Company invited ECP Utility to help with their testing efforts on tranmission line guy anchors at their Alabama Power, Calera, AL facility. In their never ending quest for constant improvement Southern Company has asked ECP Utility division to witness anchor installations and help design testing criteria for guy anchors.

ECP Utility openly obliged the request and  spent the day reviewing installation practices along with meeting with representatives from NEETRAC, Alabama Power and Georgia Power. ECP Utility also introduced their Smart Anchor Monitor (ECP SAM) during the field installation. The ECP SAM has the ability to monitor and record torque, depth, speed of installation and angle of installation on any anchor installation equipment. This unique device has proven very reliable and invaluable to linemen and design engineers alike. 

At one point during the field installation demostration, when the linemen thought they had a broken anchor, the ECP SAM showed that they had actually only hit a soft spot int he soil. When encouraged to keep the installation going the linemen quickly realized that the anchor found a new, tougher soil layer to reach torque requirement in. Upon reviewing the recorded data it was clearly noted that the guy anchor penetrated a 4-5 foot layer of soft soil embeded between two stiff layers of clay. The installing linemen agreed that the ECP SAM would be a valuable timesaving addition to their toolbox.

ECP Utility looks forward to working with everyone at Southern Company and NEETRAC on all future testing and design criteria for transmission line anchors.