Insulator washing on live power lines
 

Anyone have any rules of thumb or standard operating procedures to share regarding insulator washing on live power lines?

Don't touch the ground while washing it?

1) Get yourself a nice safe job disarming Russian ordinance in Ukraine?

2) Get a crew-cut. Your hair standing on end will scare the crap out of your oppo.

3) Go work for a gas company searching for leaks with a cigarette lighter.

I've seen it done both from a helicopter and from a bucket truck. Common thread in both cases is the utility your working for will TELL you what the rules are. There is no standard procedure that is common between utilities.

Watched some helicopter guys play with insulators a couple of years ago (I did medicals for a couple of the company pilots, and they clued me in to where they would be working, after we were talking about those sorts of ops)
They said it was “hot hand work” in which the poor guy doing the actual work was brought up to the potential of the line and then did the work without conducting to ground.

Anyway, it was a high overcast day, and this guy crawled out onto a little platform on the side of the helicopter.
I was standing by the side of the road
maybe 200m from the Hughes something or other when a poor fellow with a dorsal harness crawled out on an aerial platform on a skid, stuck a three foot pole out with a hook on the end of it, and accepted a really visible 3 meter arc from the line.

After he bonded on (he hooked the lead onto the wire) the helicopter kept him adjacecent to the area of work until he was done.

Everyone involved clearly bore elephant nuts….

Used to see videos of crews doing this when I worked for a powerline unit in the UK. I'm SOOO glad I live in a country where frequent, occasionally-heavy rain does all the insulator-washing we need!

https://www.haverfield.com/
this outfit does a lot of work and has some interesting videos

The safest way to do this is to get someone else to do it.

“Haverfield Aviation performs energized insulator washing for American Electric Power.”

Live line wash
 

Worked on a power station south west of Alexandria where the switchyard was 500KV!Live line washing was installed by contractors and consisted of several sets of fine water jets aimed at the insulators(they could get coated with sand/salt particles being near the desert).First test,loud bang followed by turbine trip!!Happened twice and it was found that the jets were at the wrong angle!
Working in Riyadh I was chosen(guini pig) to demonstrate a hot stick on a 275kv transformer,try not to look scared said the vendor of said hot stick!!!So with thick rubber gloves I prodded the live terminal and got the red light!!Was I scared?....Yes!!

In the interests of you not killing someone learning. A bit of light reading from an experienced operator.

• AS 5804 High-Voltage Live Working
• IEEE 516 Guide for Maintenance Methods on Energised Powerlines
• ESAA Helicopter for Live Line Work Guidelines
• IEEE 957: Guide for Cleaning Insulators

Don't just try it yourself. One flash and your ash.

The network operator will tell you how they want it done. Comply with their requirements and if they don't have any walk away.

Thanks for the references and the advice!