230 kV cable buyers in New York

The overhead 230 kV lot

Overhead 230 kV conductor is usually two sub-conductors per phase in the 795 to 954 kcmil range, held apart by bundle spacers and supported by suspension assemblies with armour rods. The bundle exists to control corona and surge impedance as much as to add capacity, which is why sub-conductor size is not simply scaled up when load grows — a reconductor may keep the same bundle geometry and change the conductor.

What a buyer can reuse from this lot is most of it, conditional on identification: conductor with a tag and footage, spacers and dampers as assemblies, armour rods, insulator strings in composite or glass, and OPGW with the fiber count known. What cannot be reused is conductor cut down at every structure, hardware bent during takedown, and anything that sat in a coastal yard long enough for the galvanising to go.

• Sub-conductor size and stranding, per drum rather than per lot
• Bundle spacers counted as sets, since they are useless individually
• OPGW fiber count and whether the tube ends were sealed
• Insulator type, because composite and porcelain have different reuse markets
• Structure hardware separated from conductor — bolts and plates are bought by weight, fittings are not

Pipe-type 230 kV in an urban setting

A pipe-type circuit is a pressure vessel as much as an electrical asset. The cable inside is paper-insulated, usually copper conductor, taped and impregnated, and it lives in a steel pipe filled with degassed dielectric fluid held at pressure by a pumping plant. Potheads at each end bring the conductor out through a porcelain or composite housing, and the pipe carries a coating and a cathodic protection system along the whole run.

When that circuit is retired, what remains is coated steel pipe, cable inside it, fluid to drain and dispose of, and terminal equipment. Copper is the main value and it is a real quantity, because 230 kV pipe-type conductors are large. Steel is worth recovering. Fluid is a cost rather than an asset, and potheads are worth more as spares than as scrap when they are intact.

Almost none of it returns to service as cable. Paper-insulated pipe-type cable that has carried load for decades, been drained and pulled out is not a reusable cable product; the handling alone damages the dielectric. Anyone quoting it as cable is quoting an inspection they cannot complete.

Station bus, jumpers and the parts people forget

A 230 kV substation lot is often worth more than the line material that came with it. Aluminum tube bus — 6063-T6 tube in schedule 40 or heavier wall — is bought in 20 to 40 ft lengths with welded or bolted fittings, and it is expensive new. Supports, post insulators, expansion joints, flexible braid and the clamps that join it all carry reuse value if they were removed rather than cut.

Jumpers are the other half. Short ACSR or ACSS lengths from conductor-to-equipment connections, often with compression terminals already fitted, are the kind of thing swept into a scrap pile and then bought new for the next job. A station lot dismantled carefully, with fittings bagged and labeled by assembly, is worth several times one that was cut apart and loaded with a grapple.