Epsilon Cable brings advanced conductors to the next level during CIGRE Paris session 2024

Following 3 days of technical advisory groups held in the city of Bordeaux, which offered the opportunity for many delegates to visit Epsilon Cable’s nearby factory, the 2024 CIGRE Paris Session (August 25-29) held in the Palais des Congrès was a very intense week for thousands of transmission professionals.

Every two years, the CIGRE Paris event is a unique opportunity to discuss recent designs and trends in the industry.

As a leading manufacturer in the field of advanced conductors, Epsilon Cable unveiled a series of innovation, partnerships and events throughout the week, on Epsilon’s booth as well as through technical conferences.

Alongside the event, Epsilon Cable had also setup a panel discussion to share the state of the art of advanced conductors design and installation, which was followed by an afterwork in a nearby venue to share a few drinks and delicious French cuisine.

This year, visitors on Epsilon Cable’s could discover a series of groundbreaking innovation focusing on improving transmission and distribution overhead lines, including a new efficient advanced conductor, conductor monitoring technology, stringing equipment and structural reinforcement methods for pylons and poles.

CoreCheck® monitoring

After years of development, prototyping and field testing, the event was the first public demonstration of CoreCheck®, an innovative testing method to assess the integrity of the composite core at any time during the conductor lifetime, such as during manufacturing and after installation.

The patented technology relies on breakdown voltage to detect any defect in the composite, which makes it easy and convenient to deploy on the field while reducing the risk of false positive or false negative.

After live demonstrations in test setups and its successful deployment on a trial in 2023, the CIGRE Paris was an excellent opportunity for utilities, EPCs and stranders to discover the patented technology and discuss in details the associated hardware and procedure for its quick and easy deployment on the field.

The technology behind CoreCheck® was also the topic of a technical paper and poster session presented by Léo RICHARD, one of Epsilon’s Product Manager and CIGRE delegate. Following last edition’s Cigre NGN Best Presentation Award for Epsilon’s composite core ageing model, we are proud that Leo was awarded an honorable mention by the CIGRE jury.

Swivel cover joint

The most vigilant observers could spot another interesting innovation on the wall of Epsilon’s booth: a swivel cover joint designed to enable the safe use of midspan joints with pulleys during stringing, and therefore save time during conductors’ installation by making it possible to do those midspan joint directly after the tensioner. The stringing equipment effectively minimizes bending of the conductor at a sharp angle on both side of the cover joint, to avoid any potential damage to the composite core.

The introduction of this new patented swivel joint by Tesmec and Epsilon followed an already well-established partnership between those 2 innovative family-owned companies. Tesmec and Epsilon had already published a joint catalog focusing on stringing equipment for HVCRC® and ECRC® Advanced Conductors.

Structural reinforcement for pylons and poles

Innovations showcased by Epsilon didn’t stop at conductors but also extended to structures.

This CIGRE event was the occasion for many transmission professionals to discover that Epsilon Composite is a pioneer and worldwide leader in composite structural strengthening solutions for civil engineering structures. It was therefore quite relevant to leverage this know-how to cover structures of transmission and distribution overhead lines, which are made of the same materials and face very similar challenges.

Epsilon’s booth showcased several demonstrators of its patented carbon fiber strengthening solutions for pylons and poles.
Based on more than 30 years expertise in civil engineering and carbon fiber pultrusion, Epsilon designed technical solutions to reliably and cost effectively extend structures lifetime, with minimized onsite labour.

We felt those solutions would be of interest for both transmission and distribution utilities, and were happy to see that the 2 demonstrators on display -one for metallic lattice structures and the other one for concrete poles, grabbed the attention of many asset managers looking to repair or extend the lifetime of ageing structures on their grid.

Panel discussion on advanced conductor design & installation

On Wednesday evening, Epsilon Cable’s team hosted a private event in the form of a panel discussion with leading industry experts from around the world, focusing on the design & installation of composite core conductors.
Panel experts included representatives from Amprion, Elia, TenneT, Nexans, EFLA, Sicame, Tesmec and Epsilon Cable.

With a full room of more than 100 transmission line professionals attending from all over the world, the event proved to be a huge success and a great way to foster ideas, share best practices from several leading TSOs, and discover case studies on innovative technologies.

As usual, the discussion extended well beyond the Palais des Congrès when the gates closed for the day, and the participants could extend their talks during an afterwork and networking event in a nearby venue until late at night.

New manufacturing partnerships

Finally, the 2024 CIGRE Paris Session was the ideal opportunity for Epsilon Cable to develop new partnerships or confirm existing and thriving collaborations.

While most discussions we held during the week shall remain private, some of those partnerships were made public during the show.

Such is the case with the signature of a contract between Epsilon and Riyhad Cables, which further extended the list of Epsilon’ stranding partners and will undoubtedly boost the adoption of the technology in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Iraq.

We would like to thank the CIGRE organization, all visitors to our booth and all participants in related events for this outstanding week and for their cooperation.