Helicopters Assist GC Crew With Transmission Job in Grass Valley

After a crew from PG&E’s Tower department installed a new tower near Lake of the Pines in the Grass Valley area, a GC Transmission crew from the North Valley was sent out to lift the conductors on the tower to a new cage extension in order to correct a ground clearance violation. The crew was also tasked with installing new insulators and hardware, as well as re-tensioning the wire, which became too tight when it was lifted.

The job utilized two helicopters – one to pick the wire, and the other to carry members of the crew.

“We do this quite a bit,” said crew member Jason Madigan. “We’ve been taking care of this type of work since [last] spring, all throughout the Valley and up here in the foothills. We’ve been working on this particular job for the past couple of months. We call jobs like this NERC jobs, where there are ground clearance violations, and we come in to lift the wire up.”

NERC stands for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the nonprofit entity that oversees and regulates electric grid reliability in the US, Canada and Mexico. When a NERC aircraft identifies a violation, the company is notified, and crews like Madigan’s are dispatched to correct the issue.