Safety Service Disconnector

At a time when the energy industry has become accustomed to seeing more of the same in new product developments, PLP Australia has released the Safety Service Disconnector, or SSD, a product that makes people ask why hasn.t someone thought of it before?

Designed to fit over existing single phase service cables, the product provides a means of ensuring that broken service lines will fall the to ground in an electrically safe manner, drastically reducing the risk to life in the event an oversize truck or falling tree should bring a service line to ground.

The SSD was developed by Preformed Line Products at their Glendenning R&D facility, in answer to concerns in the market place regarding the risk of service cables being brought down, a risk that has grown as trucks are increasingly likely to snag the cables in suburban streets. The growing number of storms that bring trees down in front yards also poses a substantial risk. To date, when a service line is severed, it is a matter of chance where the break will occur, therefore there is a chance that a live line will fall in a front yard or on a footpath. The SSD has been developed to ensure that the break occurs at the pole end of the cable leaving an electrically dead cable to fall to ground, the live cable is left hanging from the pole completely electrically insulated, until a qualified person can replace the service cable.

How did PLP conceive such an idea? “The idea of cutting the cable at the pole end has been around for some time”, said Derek Jefferson of PLP. What our engineers have managed to achieve is to develop a product that can be attached to the cable without disrupting the service. That offers a real advantage to the utilities as they will not have to advise a householder that their service will be interrupted. In fact, the entire SSD device can be fitted without any disruption to service at all.

PLP now plans to develop a 3 phase version for 4 wire configurations employing the same patented design as has been used in the single phase version.

Further enquiries are welcome at PLP (Australia) on (02) 8805 0000.