T&D Talk: Novel Innovations in T&D to Ensure a Reliable Electric Grid

 T&D Talk is a special series on the T&D World Line Life podcast channel. For each episode, companies can share their stories about how they are supporting the electric utility industry. Through their tools, technologies, products and services, they are helping lineworkers and fieldworkers improve their productivity and safety.

For Part 2 of a new T&D Talk series sponsored by Southwire, we focused on innovations in transmission and distribution to ensure reliability and resiliency. Our guest for this episode is Charles Holcombe, director of overhead systems and solutions for Southwire. 

Charles Holcombe leads utility applications engineering, new product development, conductor characterization lab/software functions and product line management for differentiated overhead conductors. Since joining Southwire in 2007, Charles held multiple positions in utility new product development and applications engineering.

He is a leading expert on overhead transmission and distribution conductor systems, is a member of IEEE CIGRE and chairs ASTM B01. He earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from The Georgia Institute of Technology and is a licensed professional engineer in the State of Georgia. 

He also holds eight U.S. patents in the utility transmission and distribution space, along with numerous others internally.

• How do we ensure a reliable grid moving forward with the challenges we see from a growth standpoint with the rise of data centers, a growth in population and a transformation in the automotive market? 
• How can we better use technology to deliver on the goal to add more capacity to transmission networks?
• How can utilities better use existing corridors for transmission and distribution? 
• How can we put more capacity through existing ROWs to reduce the time horizon to deal with the transmission congestion issue?
• What are the different technologies currently available for advanced conductor and their features and benefits?
• What, if any, work practice changes should users expect when reconductoring with advanced conductors?
• What are the regulatory requirements for grid-enhancing technologies in the transmission space like FERC 881 and dynamic line ratings and how they could impact reconductoring going forward. 

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