Power defrost

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Dartmouth College engineering professor Victor Petrenko has invented a way to keep ice off power lines.

Working with his colleagues at Ice Engineering in Lebanon, New Hampshire, Dartmouth College engineering professor Victor Petrenko has invented a way to keep ice off power lines.

The technology is called a variable-resistance cable (VRC) de-icing system.

With only minor cable modifications plus some off-the-shelf electronics, the system switches the electrical resistance of a standard power line from low to high.

The high resistance automatically creates heat to melt ice build-up or keep it from forming in the first place.

'The beauty of the VRC system is that it's fully customisable and is an affordable addition to the current manufacturing and installation process,' said Gabriel Martinez, Ice Engineering's vice-president, who studied under Professor Petrenko at Dartmouth.

'And it works without causing any service interruption whatsoever,' he added.

Ice Engineering plans to install and test a full-scale VRC system prototype on a section of power line in Orenburg, Russia, later this month.

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