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Standardizing
Foundation Design
for Electric
Transmission
Structures
SPECIAL
ISSUE: INFRASTRUCTURE Transmission line in protected wetland
Unlike the commercial building and focused on improvements in design half of design professionals quantitatively
transportation industries, the electric models, site characterization, exploration assess risk in their design process.
transmission industry does not have a strategies, and testing to reduce uncertainty
unified code that explicitly covers design and variance in analysis. Transmission line State of the Practice
and construction of the various foundation engineers realized that safety and reliability Recent industry surveys performed by EPRI
types used to support electrical structures; advancements in design based on (DiGioia, 2010) and by DFI (Kandaris and
there is no overarching professional group probabilistic approaches, with a focus on Davidow, 2015) attempt to quantify the
that leads this effort. Guideline documents the unique nature of transmission lines, state of the practice in terms of design
developed by other industries describe could better control risk and cost. methodology. These surveys examined the
general design methodology for foundation Some transmission line professionals current design practices of electric
types used in the electric power industry, took advantage of these advancements, transmission and overhead line design
but practices vary significantly from utility particularly where research led to improved engineers working for U.S. engineering
to utility. For this reason, DFI established the software and models. Yet by 1995, after two firms and utilities. Among the broader
Electric Power Systems Foundations Work- decades of extensive research, the industry survey results, the EPRI study found that
ing Group in 2013, and upgraded the work- had made little progress in changing design two-thirds of responders were still using
ing group to technical committee status in habits. Most designers were still charac- traditional deterministic (i.e., safety factor)
2018 after significant growth in member- terizing sites via deterministic methods, approaches for design of transmission line
ship and plans for continual activity. using loads that may or may not relate to a foundations, with safety factors ranging
consistent probability of occurrence, and upwards of 4.0, depending on the structure
Previous Standardization Attempts applying a traditional global factor of safety type, foundation type and design model.
Nearly 40 years ago, the Electric Power approach (Phoon, et al., 1995). The follow- The DFI survey a few years later showed
Research Institute (EPRI) embarked on a ing two decades have seen even greater about 50% of electric transmission
major research effort to optimize reliability developments in software and reliability- foundation professionals using traditional
and economics of electric transmission based analysis methods, but old habits seem methods, and just under 40% using
structure foundation design. Strategies to die hard as recent surveys show less than probabilistic design approaches.
AUTHORS Peter Kandaris, P.E., DiGioia Gray & Associates, and Steve Davidow, P.E., S.E., P.Eng., Quanta Subsurface