How To Teach An Old Line New Tricks

To mitigate aging infrastructure that had more than exceeded its life expectancy, Brookfield Smoky Mountain Transmission LLC planned to upgrade the Long Span—a 5010-ft, 161-kV transmission line across the Little Tennessee River in southeastern Tennessee. The first line of the Long Span was built in 1917 and the second in 1926. These two lines were the longest transmission line spans in the world at the time. The project upgrade posed interesting engineering challenges and provided a look into the past. The original conductor was custom made and most of the hardware was either custom made or something no one had seen in recent times.