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To: maceng2 who wrote (257955)	8/28/2003 1:01:39 PM
From: Tom Swift	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Conglomerate 3M Touts New Beefed-Up Power Lines Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Minn. - August 28, 2002 Jennifer Bjorhus Aug. 28--First it was a run on duct tape. Then SARS masks. Now, on the heels of the nation's recent power blackout, another 3M Co. product may get a lift. A $16 billion blue-chip conglomerate so diversified that it's never far from the latest crisis, 3M is touting new power lines that carry up to twice the electricity of conventional high-voltage lines the same size. The beefed-up overhead cables are still about a year away from market, but interest in them has heated up since the Aug. 14 blackout in the Northeastern U.S. and in Canada focused attention on bottlenecks in the nation's electrical transmission grids. "There has been an uptick in interest," said Tracy Anderson, program manager for the composite conductor program at 3M headquarters in Maplewood. "Congestion is a key issue. There's no question about it." Since Aug. 14, 3M has talked to several power companies about doing showcase installations next year, Anderson said. Although Anderson declined to say which companies 3M is talking to, Xcel Energy in Minneapolis and power companies in Hawaii and North Dakota and Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee have been testing the lines. Some potential customers are waiting for studies of the blackout to be completed before proceeding. "They tend to plan their projects one year in advance," Anderson said. "It's this kind of long sales cycle." About seven years in the making, 3M's power lines are made of heat-resistant ceramic fibers wrapped in aluminum-zirconium wire and then in aluminum wire. The industry standard is a steel core wrapped in aluminum. 3M says it's cheaper and easier to upgrade power lines with its new cables because they can be installed on existing equipment, and don't sag like conventional power lines do when they heat up. 3M is making the lines in limited quantities in the Twin Cities. Meanwhile, at least two companies are working on high-temperature, low-sag wires made out of special composites, but "they're substantially behind 3M," said Luther Dow, director of power delivery and markets for the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif. In addition, two East Coast companies are working on wires made out of ceramic-based superconductors that are buried underground and can carry five times the power of conventional steel and aluminum cables. Intermagnetics General Corp. in Latham, N.Y., has completed short demonstration project, and American Superconductor Corp. of Westborough, Mass., plans to have cables ready for commercial use in 2006 or 2007. Other technologies include installing sensors that report the condition of transmission lines and steer electricity to clear paths, but no one company has developed such a program yet, Dow said. Xcel's principal transmission engineer, Steve LaCasse, said the test lines carry from 50 percent more to double the electricity of other lines. LaCasse said he'll probably consider using the conductor as Xcel upgrades lines. Hawaiian Electric Co. last year strung the 3M lines on the north shore of Oahu to test whether salt water corrodes them. The lines performed well, but it could still be another year or two before Hawaiian decides to buy, said Sucuma Elliot, a technical services engineer with Hawaiian Electric. Associated Press contributed to this report. ----- To see more of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to twincities.com. (c) 2003, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Minn. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.