ICEBox

Icing on power lines can cause major disruptions in electricity supply networks. These disruptions lead to excessive costs for repair as well as consequential losses. There is also a risk to human safety for employees tasked with the repair of power lines in harsh environmental conditions. Icing on power lines is a problem experienced in most high-latitude countries of which Norway has some of the highest recorded ice loads. This project aims to develop cost effective instrumentation that allows for detailed, real-time monitoring of the ice loads at a large number of exposed locations and to develop methods for connecting all real time observations to a probabilistic icing forecasting system. With an increased awareness of possible failures due to climatic loads, the project will consequently investigate the most promising countermeasures for the removal or reduction of icing on the existing lines as well as the possibility to change the design to prevent the build up of large ice amounts on new lines. Examples of such methods that will be studied in the project are the use of anti-torsional pendulums; super-hydrophobic or ice-phobic coatings; heating of the lines by controlling the electrical current; induction spirals; robot technologies. The objectives of this project are:

• Develop and test cost effective sensors for real-time monitoring of ice loads in the grid.
• Develop an improved analytical icing model for icing of large objects.
• Develop probabilistic forecasting methods for short-term prediction of icing events.
• Improve the parameterization of wet snow in the WRF microphysics code.
• Develop a nationwide map of design ice loads including effects of climate change.
• Investigation and numerical modelling of technologies for ice reduction and removal.

 The main partners of this project were, University of Tromsø, KjellerVindTeknikk-Oslo, STATNETT, CICERO, University of Oslo, National Center for Atmospheric research (NCAR), I2G-Sweden, EFLA & LandsNet Iceland.

Project Funded By:     Norwegian Research Council & STATNETT.

Budget:                       3,45 mEUR

Project Duration:      2018- 2022