Effectiveness of selected recent initiatives in extending the service life of wooden electricity distribution poles in Uganda.

Abstract

Electricity transmission poles are critical infrastructure in the power distribution network, and their maintenance is essential to ensure reliable electricity supply. There exist several defects in Eucalyptus wood, common among which include; end splits, surface checks, brittle heart and pith, shakes, springing, and tangential shrinkage and collapse; most among which are as a result of growth stresses within a living tree. These greatly reduce the durability of the poles in service, which studies have reported to be 10 years in Uganda (Otuko et al., 2024),. Despite the fact that there are various initiatives that have been put in place to increase pole service life, results show that 8.3% of the poles supplied between 2017 to 2021 still failed prematurely resulting into incurring of replacement costs worth USD 8.8 million (Otuko et al., 2024). Therefore, this study was aimed at contributing to the improved durability of wooden distribution poles in service through use of selected cost-effective post treatment initiatives such as groundline paving and waxing open warping checks. This was done on a sample of 225 poles which included 110 groundline paved poles and 115 as a control in Kampala, as well as 91 poles with waxed checks and 81 poles as a control in Isingiro and Mbarara. Descriptive statistics such as the mean (moisture content, check width, length and depth), frequency of poles affected by fungi and termites as well as poles with evidence of widened checks were made. The Chi square was used to test for association between initiatives and: degree of attack of fungi and termites; evidence of the widened checks. Findings from the study indicated that: Poles with paved ground lines showed marginal reduction in fungal and termite attack compared to poles with unpaved ground-line; Groundline paving reduced the moisture content at the poles ground line for poles with paved ground-line; Poles with waxed checks had fewer incidences of check widening in service as compared to unwaxed poles; Waxing also reduced water entry into the pole. However, the susceptibility of the waxing material to the weather changes highlights the need for research into more durable or other alternatives of sealing checks in the poles that can withstand Uganda’s climate