Heated Power Lines

The mission of my business entity is to diminish the amount of damage being done by winter storms. As someone from the Midwest, I went South for college to escape winter storms during the school year. However, being at the University of Mississippi for 3 years now, I’ve lived through 3 winter storms here already. The last storm, Fern, was devastating, and students from around the city of Oxford were out of power for weeks, and people were freezing and dying throughout the city. My goal with this invention is to completely end the catastrophic damage these storms cause everyone.

My invention is necessary for the future of the American power grid due to its prevention of devastating power loss during winter storms. Ice and snow accumulation on our power lines during storms can add 100s, if not 1000s of pounds of tension force to the cables and poles. A standard 300-ft power line can experience over 700 pounds of force added to it with just 1 inch of ice accumulated. This has been a massive problem, and it was especially shown during Winter Storm Fern in January of this year. People in southern states such as Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Alabama were hit with ice and snow accumulation they never expected. Due to their infrastructure’s lack of preparedness for cold weather, the power grids were damaged for weeks, leaving people completely vulnerable and powerless in the coldest time of the year. The power grid, in southern states especially, are not prepared to survive 100s of pounds of ice and snow being added to them, making this problem a necessity to fix. Luckily, my idea will be cost-effective, being cheaper to install this across America than to keep succumbing to winter storm destruction. The lack of preparedness and need for power is getting worse and worse, and pretending this issue doesn’t exist is not going to fix anything. My invention is here to change the way we see winter storms, as they won’t be as daunting as they’ve always been. We can save so much money and so many lives by implementing a modern-day fix to the old power grids in America, so why wait?