Woodside 1101 Pilot
On February 4th, 2024, there was a major wind event affecting the Woodside 1101 circuit. The estimated gusty winds exceeded 100 miles per hour causing trees to fall and overhead wires to come down.
We reported to the site to evaluate any potential impact to the GLDS. Although there were dozens of trees that fell, we were only able to identify one location along the whole 0.5-mile installation where an oak tree with an approximate weight of 20,000 lbs, diameter of 23.8” fell on the GLDS and had made a dent in the ECM. The impact happened to have a branch directly causing a small puncture in the top Cap, ~1.5”, as you can see in the picture below. However, the geopolymer fill looked to be intact.
There was a saw cut on the ECM which was the result of the tree workers cutting the oak tree to clear the road (As pictured above). We started to remove the top cap to further evaluate the condition of the geopolymer and ensure the integrity of the HDP conduit and CIC. We found a crack in the geopolymer. The crack was not all the way through and certainly no exposure to the CIC. There were minor marks from the chain saw, but the chainsaw never made it through the geopolymer. We started to break the cracked concrete and remove the pieces to proceed with patching and repairing the geopolymer to bring it to its stable condition (As pictured below).
Once repaired we reinstalled the top cap and anchored the system back to the ground.
Conclusion:
The GLDS performed as designed. This was a great real-life test. The system proved to be effective and impenetrable as related to exposing powerlines or arching of conductors. We continue to work on enhancing our system and interestingly our newly developed formula for the geopolymer (Rudd Mix) has been tested 2.5X stronger than the material used for Woodside 1101 pilot. We are confident that with all the learning and improvements being made, now as well as in the future, we will further strengthen this system and its intent.
