Calling all Transmission Line Engineers!

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dawytepnoy

Understanding of Naught
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I just wanted to see how many Civil Engineers (if any in this forum) end up falling into this field. It's a very niche field with very little exposure and yet I have found that most t-line engineers are civil's as opposed to electrical's. It makes sense considering that your dealing mostly with mechanics of materials and structural lattice towers when you get into higher voltages.

 
I design transmission lines as well...but I'm electrical

Wow that's great! It seems as though it is a hybrid electical/civil discipline.

I'm relatively new to the industry. I've been designing Transmission lines upwards to 230kV for approximately 2+ years now utilizing PLS-CADD as the main tool for design. How about yourself?

 
I work for a G&T Coop/utility...I worked for them full-time thru engineering school and then while getting my MBA. I've been here for 15 years, although it doesn't seem that long. We get the opportunity to do a wide array of tasks, I handle almost all of our construction projects, grading, line design, R/W, ect...We have been using PLS-CADD for about 5-6 years, myself I have been using it for design for about 5 years. It's a fantastic product and we usually try to make it to the PLS-CADD users group when they have it every other year. It'll be in Madison,WI next year, you should think about going...

 
Very interesting! I've heard about the PLS-CADD user groups through linkedin but never realized that they actually meet every other year. Thanks for the info I'll definitely look into it!

 
I know electricals and civils in this field. Although the knee-jerk is "electrical", many civils are very good at it as the electrical planning engineers will say "I need a line from point A to Point B and it needs to be 954 ACSR" and then the civil takes over and does it. Electricals can certainly learn it, but it seems in my mind to be more of a civil type of work. Even if you are doing wood pole structures, it's still more civil than electrical.

 
I agree that the work is more civil than EE, but 3 of the 4 T-line design engineers in my company are EEs, with the fourth being civil.

An argument can be made for substation engineers as well, between structures, foundations, oil-water separators/drainage/SPCC, etc.

 
I work for a large consulting firm that has a huge T&D Department. I started working for a utility during college, and a majority of the transmission line engineers there were all electricals who did the transmission line design in PLS and even went as far as doing the foundation design. In my current company, mainly civil/structural engineers doing all the transmission line design, then we have specialized geotechnical engineers that do the foundation size, and consult electrical engineers for electrical studies to help design structure configurations and clearances. To be honest anyone who is good with a computer and has a basic understanding of engineering can learn the design. If you use PLS long enough, it becomes pretty straight forward and there isn't too much hand calculations you have to worry about.

 
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