The wood poles commonly used to support overhead line conductors in Southern Brazil are

produced from eucalyptus, an exotic tree species widely cultivated in the country.
Unfortunately, wood is subject to deterioration, which can occur as a result of the action of
physical, chemical and biological agents. Biological agents are the most important decay
factor, and wood poles can be attacked by bacteria, insects, fungi and marine drills. In
Southern Brazil, special attention is given to fungi, organisms whose forms and lifestyles
vary from simple yeast to a mushroom.
The attack of wood-decaying fungi can be rapid, resulting in a dramatic loss of pole
strength. Fungi mostly occurs about 0.5 m (1.6 ft) above to 0.5 m below ground line, where
the presence of oxygen and moisture (greater than 20%) enables metabolic activity and
growth of aerobic microorganisms. A large number of insecticides and fungicides are used
to treat wood, but the efficiency, in terms of extended service life obtained from the
application of these wood preservatives, varies greatly.

Wood Pole Population

In the electrical networks of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's southernmost region, more than 2
million wood poles are in service to support distribution and transmission lines. AES Sul
supplies some 1.15 million consumers in 118 cities in an area of some 99,268 sq km (38,328
sq miles). The overhead networks are supported by 760,000 poles, of which approximately
90% are wood.
The common treatment for wood poles is a water-based chromated copper arsenate (CCA)
preservative applied under pressure, as the use of pentachlorophenol and creosote are
forbidden. In accordance with the CCA treatment, treated wood poles must have a lifetime
of at least 15 years. Alternative preservatives have been proposed in Brazil as a substitute or
to complement the CCA treatment. Special attention has been given to a boron-fluoride
preservative, used in the retreatment of in-service poles, because of its high efficiency and
lower toxicity for humans and the environment.
For the past three years, research has been conducted with the aim to inspect about 10,000
wood poles distributed over 23 cities in Southern Brazil. The main objective is to establish a
practical, reliable and low-cost inspection procedure for in-service poles.

Materials and Methods

Approximately 10,000 in-service poles were selected at random from a population of

760,000 poles, located in the AES Sul area. From 2002-2004, inspectors visited 23 cities,
representing AES Sul's five enterprise subregions. These cities were chosen because they
present differences in soil and climatic conditions. In each city, several low-voltage lines
were randomly sampled in urban and rural areas. The majority of poles (52%) were located
in the largest urbanized metropolitan region, while poles located in rural areas were
predominantly in the North and South Frontier regions.
The pole inspections involved three steps:

Visual assessment

Hammer test

Quantitative test of the decay.

The visual assessment of wood surface determined the extent of defects such as cracks,
holes, and burned or rotten points. The hammer sound test was used to detect a hollow core
caused by internal decay in the pole portion from the ground line up to 2 m (6.6 ft). A clear
sound and hammer rebound confirms the internal condition of the wood is sound.
As the visual inspection and hammer test assessments are rather subjective, measurements
of internal and external decay also were performed. The external pole inspection included
digging out the critical region below ground line. As external decay can reduce the pole
circumference, this parameter is measured in two different positions, 0.10 m (0.33 ft) above
and 0.10 m below ground line. The difference in the pole circumferences is used to estimate
external decay.
The internal pole decay is assessed by drilling a small hole parallel to the ground line, then
inserting a probing rod with a hook into the hole to determine the thickness of the wood.
The rod has measurements used to indicate the shell thickness and estimate the internal
decay. All inspection drilling holes are treated with a boron-fluoride water-diffusible
Polesaver Rod preservative from Preschem and plugged with a polyvinyl chloride dowel to
prevent subsequent decay.
The inspection data registered in the database are pole location, the address and GPS
coordinates (which are put in a map), decay evaluations, pole classification and
recommended action.

Results and Classification

Among the 10,692 inspected poles distributed over five AES Sul regions, 90.7% were wood
poles. The first important observation is the significant number of poles (58%) without
identification tags. The metal tags may have been lost during transport or pole installation
or, simply over the in-service pole life, affected by weathering or vandalism. The loss of
identification tags reduced the information about in-service poles to only 4,075 of the
inspected poles (42%).
Results indicated that 48% were regarded as Class 1 (in a good state of preservation), 24%
were classified as Class 2 (partial decay but still serviceable; internal/external retreatment is
recommended), 15% were rejected as Class 3 (rejected pole with advanced decay;
rehabilitation reinforcement/retreatment should be made) and the remaining 13%
were regarded as Class 4 (in need of immediate replacement).
The results confirmed a higher level of pole conservation in rural areas (63%) compared to
urban areas (51%). In addition, the North Frontier region had three times fewer danger
poles in rural (6%) than in urban (17%) areas. These results are probably due to the recent
expansion of the rural network in Brazil, motivated by federal government support.

Preservative Type
From the inspected poles with an identification tag, it was only possible to identify the wood
treatment used on poles treated with CCA or creosote. Pentachlorophenol was used in Brazil
until 1970; the number of in-service poles with this preservative should not be significant,
but the presence of creosote was expected because its use was only banned in 1995. For
some poles without an identification tag, it was possible to assess the preservative type by
visual inspection (CCA was a green color while creosote was a black color). However, this
kind of identification has been taken with caution, because weathering can change a pole's
color, making visual identification difficult and inaccurate.
The distribution of the poles preserved with CCA or creosote in the five regions was studied.
The greater occurrence of poles preserved with CCA in the North Frontier was 93%, while
the highest percentage of creosote-treated poles was in the Valley region (49%). These
differences are significant compared to the global mean values (69% for CCA and 31% for
creosote) and seem to be related to the differences in the replacement rates and pole
distribution over rural and urban areas in each region.

Pole Lifetime

The aging profiles of the inspected poles for each region were studied and the in-service
time divided into four time periods: less than 5 years; 6 to 10 years; 11 to 15 years; more
than 15 years.
These periods were used to simplify the data analysis and to take into account the Brazilian
standard that establishes 15 years as the minimum in-service lifetime for a treated pole.
The majority of poles (60%) had an in-service time of less than 10 years, with the Central
region having the highest level (75%) of young poles (less than 5 years), and the
Metropolitan and North Frontier regions having the oldest pole networks (mean age of 11 to
15 years). This difference is probably associated with the more intense replacement rate and
construction of new networks, especially in rural areas, in specific regions during the last
decade.
The pole-aging profiles observed in this study differ from other countries. In Europe and
North America, the average pole age generally ranges from 25 to 50 years, but the wood
species and treatment used differ from that in Brazil. In Australia, where the poles are
mostly eucalyptus timber treated with CCA, the durability for these structures ranges from
35 to 45 years.
The durability of the in-service wood pole is related to several factors:

The quality of new wood poles going into service

The environmental factors

The effectiveness of the inspection and maintenance programs.

All these factors are very different in Brazil compared to other countries, and the use of fastgrowing eucalyptus species is probably one of the most important aspects for the shorter inservice lifetime observed.
The influence of preservative type has a marked impact on pole decay as shown by the
results. CCA-treated poles deteriorated at a relatively steady rate during the four lifetime
periods, whereas poles treated with creosote were noted to exhibit an improved level of
conservation. The results indicate a fast and significant decrease in the life of poles,
probably because of the quality of white wood and the CCA treatment process. The results
further suggest that creosote offers better protection against fungi decay in Brazilian
conditions, probably due to its higher toxicity and a more efficient treatment process.

Quality-Control Standards
Although the study results are preliminary, it will be possible to use them to establish a
more realistic replacement pole rate. In addition to introducing quality-control standards
for the white wood preservative impregnation process, the implementation of a periodic and
systematic inspection program of all wood pole networks is recommended.