What is a Rapid Pole? 

The Rapid Pole is a new temporary mobile pole technology that helps crews restore power to customers in half the time.

The solution involves two new pieces of equipment:

• A Rapid Pole
• A Rapid Pole with a self-contained primary riser pole and pad mount transformer for generator back feed
  

These tools can be set up and running in as few as 30 minutes. 

The Rapid Pole is attached to a single axle tactical trailer designed to get to trouble spots quickly. The pole can telescope as high as 48 feet, and it is capable of holding up to 3,000 pounds of vertical weight.

The poles are battery-operated hydraulic units and release zero emissions, aligning with our environmental commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030. The pole and transformer feeds high voltage power back into the system.

The Rapid Pole prototypes have been in the works for more than two years. The idea came during an outage in a heat wave.

Damage to a pole in Milford, New Hampshire, knocked out power for about 400 customers with an estimated restoration time of 15 hours. As a work-around, crews built a temporary pole, ran high-voltage cables and brought in a generator.

The lights were back on in half the time. Once ready, crews installed a permanent pole and reconnected power. The mobile solution gave crews more time to complete system repairs while quickly restoring service. 

As a result, we worked with a third-party vendor to design and manufacture the tools.