Of Splices and Prices

Dear Ms. Frog,

The other rejuvenation vendor refers to a “blow & go” injection method.  What is blow & go?  Does blow & go make sense for me?

California Dreamin’

Dear Dreamer-

Nobel prize winner, John Steinbeck, set his novella Of Mice and Men in California.  Few would know that my Great-great-…-great Grandmother, Salinas Bull Frog, a friend of Steinbeck talked him out of his working title, which was “Of Frogs and Men.”  As appealing as that title is, Salinas pointed out three problems to John.  First and foremost, a frog would not be pleased to ride around in Lenny’s pocket.  Second, the words Mice and Men are mutually alliterative and would sell more books.  And lastly she pointed out the play upon the famous line of the poem by Robert Burns that most would recognize, to wit,  “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men.”  Again, clever marketing cachet.

You have to be wondering where this frog is going with this lesson in American literature!  Bear with me for now; it will come into focus soon.  In the story, Lennie, a giant of a man, but with limited mental abilities, loves to pet soft things and cares for a mouse in his pocket.  He accidentally gets into really big trouble and the mob rushes to judgment and would undoubtedly kill Lennie, an outcome that would not be tolerated in 21^st Century California.  The story brings tears to my big eyes, but like Lennie, first impressions are often wrong and a more careful analysis and a cooler head are required to reach the right conclusion.  “Of Splices and Prices” requires the same careful analysis, and if they are paying attention in Stockholm perhaps will land the first ever Nobel Prize in Literature to an amphibian.

First, the phrase, “blow and go” was coined by injection operating personnel about a dozen years ago shortly after a pricing paradigm called “Productivity Pricing” was introduced.  Productivity pricing was benevolently conceived by my Novinium colleague, Glen Bertini, to address productivity issues with the more traditional unit pricing.  When a rejuvenation supplier provides straight unit pricing to a circuit owner, the circuit owner has no incentive to provide timely switching orders.  At first glance the circuit owner might prefer the unit approach.  A more enlightened consideration recognizes that the rejuvenation supplier, over the long run, must simply raise prices to cover the inefficiency this situation creates.  Hence, productivity pricing introduces a time-based charge so that both the circuit owner and rejuvenation supplier are incented to work efficiently.  That’s the good news – productivity pricing leads to lower rejuvenation cost per foot.  The bad news, and unintended consequence of productivity pricing, is that minimization of the rejuvenation cost is not the optimum strategy for a circuit owner.  Those operating guys were the first to recognize this fact when they coined the “blow and go” phrase.  They recognized that the rejuvenation vendor’s profit was maximized by injecting all the cables that are easy to inject and abandoning those that present any challenge.  In order to enjoy this result it is necessary to suspend consideration of the cables that must be replaced -- the "go" part of blow and go.  As illustrated nearby, rehabilitaiton encompasses both rejuvenation and replacement.  It is not prudent to consider the two separately.

From where I am sitting in the rejuvenation supply side of the equation it is tempting indeed to embrace blow and go.  But at Novinium we have a different perspective.  Sure we want to make a profit like the next guy, but we believe that we are best served by aligning our interests with those of our cherished circuit owner customers.  So no, Dreamer, you do not want to embrace “blow and go” and you do not want to embrace productivity pricing.  I will share with you a better pricing paradigm in a moment, but first, let’s see why “blow and go” is usually not the lowest capital solution to your underground reliability issues.

Here is where the “Splices” portion “Of Splices and Prices” comes into play.  On average about half of legacy splices support flow with the unsustained pressure rejuvenation (UPR) paradigm.  Blow and go ignores those cables with problematic splices and those cables must be replaced for a reliable circuit.  You like rejuvenation in part, because it is so much more capital efficient than replacement.  With blow and go in a typical URD project, about a third of the cables must be replaced.  With an aggressive splice replacement approach, Novinium routinely injects over 90% of the cable segments it addresses.  Digging and repairing splices cost money, but it costs a lot less than replacing the cables for the 20-25% of the cable population where the tactic is judiciously applied.  The figure nearby illustrates the concept.  As the aggressiveness with which splices are addressed is increased, the capital cost of rejuvenation (including the capital cost of addressing associated splices) goes up, but the total capital cost of rehabilitation goes down.  Remember, replacement costs much more!

There is a better way.  We call it Enhanced Productivity Pricing (EPP) and it builds upon the operational lessons of the last two decades to provide a highly reliable, fully rehabilitated circuit at the minimum capital cost.  This result is achieved by carefully aligning the interests of the circuit owner with those of the rehabilitation supplier.

Here is how EPP works.  Each of the important, but independent tasks required to test and treat a cable are given individual unit prices.  For a typical looped URD cable for example, these tasks include …

1.     closing the normal open at the beginning of the day

2.     switching a cable out of service and grounding it, when performed by Novinium

3.     testing the cable for splices and corrosion

4.     pinpointing splices and corrosion when required

5.     excavating/restoring a pit when required

6.     removing old splices and installing new splices when required

7.     preparing ends for injection

8.     injection

9.     finishing the injection (removing equipment, clean-up, etc)

10.   switching a cable back into service

11.   opening the normal open at the end of the day

Each of these tasks are billed only as they are executed.  There are no separate charges for time in any of the injection units, 3-9.  For the switching units 1, 2, 10, and 11, Novinium agrees with the circuit owner on an appropriate time standard for each.  We then track the actual time to execute these steps.  For example if step 2 should take 15 minutes, but is delayed by the circuit owner’s dispatch operator and the step requires 30 minutes, the excess time is billed as non-injection activity at an agreed upon hourly rate.  Other tasks, ancillary to the injection, also crop up in a typical rehabilitation job.  For example, suppose a bushing fails when an elbow is removed.  The injection team must cease their injection activity and replace the failed bushing.  Again, this time is billed to the nearest tenth of an hour as non-injection activity. 

Enhanced productivity pricing or EPP is the best way to structure a rehabilitation program.  EPP aligns the strategic interests of the circuit owner with the rehabilitation supplier.  We still get customers that want to use the blow and go paradigm and we are happy to comply, but at least we tell them there is a better way.  Unfortunately the productivity pricing paradigm has been utilized for over a decade, so some are reluctant to change.  Which reminds me again of something the author “Of Mice and Men,” John Steinbeck once said, “It is the nature of man as he grows older … to protest against change, particularly change for the better.”

Looking out for you and embracing the future,

Thermo

Better with Presure

Dear Frog of Knowledge,

How can we be sure that the higher pressure does not damage the polymer insulation or impact the contact between the semiconducting conductor shield and the conductor?  Also, does the expansion affect the interface adhesion between the insulation and the insulation shield, especially for older cables with thermoplastic EIS?

Regards,

SFZ

Dear SFZ-

First of all, Novinium is the only company in the world that can use all of the available injection paradigms.  The state-of-the-art in rejuvenation technology is sustained pressure rejuvenation or SPR.  The folks at Novinium invented that technology.  The old method is called unsustained pressure rejuvenation or UPR and Novinium founders invented that approach too.  To learn more about the differences between SPR and UPR check out my blog entry, “How to inject cables” at …

http://www.novinium.com/frogblog/post/2010/06/18/How-To-Inject-Cables.aspx

To get a direct and comprehensive answer to your question read the paper, “Silicone Injection:  Better with Pressure” at …

 http://www.novinium.com/pdf/papers/Better_With_Pressure.pdf

I have reproduced the summary of that paper below …

“Rejuvenation injection pressures up to 1000 psig have been in use for over two decades.

Thousands of cables have been treated with moderate pressures in the 100 psig to 400 psig range. Every time moderate pressure injection has been examined against a lower pressure control, the higher pressure injection has outperformed the lower pressure control.

Cables are designed to accommodate the radial stresses that occur throughout their service. A cable warms with increasing load and cools when the load decreases. The 5.8-times and 6.8-times differences between the linear expansion with temperature of conductors and their insulating polymers create transient gaps between the conductor and the conductor shield.  These transient gaps are a normal part of daily operation and deflections of 1% of the cable radius are common. The very similar deflection experienced when a cable is injected a single time creates no forces that are materially different and induces no geometrical deflections that are greater than a single temperature escalation from ambient to a cable’s maximum operating temperature. In contrast to the daily temperature cycles endured by a cable, sustained pressure rejuvenation involves a single cycle. Because sustained pressure rejuvenation utilizes an injection adaptor with shrinkback restraint, the only possible manifestation of the single pressure cycle or future daily temperature cycles is entirely eliminated. Experiments confirm that there are no significant changes in the geometry of a cable treated with the SPR process. Field observations such as that memorialized in Figure 8 (of the paper) confirm the laboratory measurements.

Not only does moderate pressure injection provide higher performance (even with older technology fluids), but it also lowers the cost of injection and makes possible the use of advanced rejuvenation materials. Few circuit owners would consider buying a cable today, which did not have anti-oxidant or tree-retardant properties. The newest generation of rejuvenation fluids has about two to three times the viscosity of the first generation fluid, because these fluids include advanced functionalities that provide 2 to 4 times more post-injection life than the lower viscosity 22-year old technology.

Sustained pressure rejuvenation (SPR), thermally enhanced rejuvenation (TER), and Unsustained Pressure Rejuvenation (UPR) are tools that circuit owners should have available for their rehabilitation programs. No one tool works best in every circumstance.”

Rejecting the one-size-fits-all mentality,

Thermonuclear

40-year Life

Dear All Knowing Frog,

What tests have you performed to verify the 40 years of additional life, thus being able to extend a 40 year warranty?

Regards,

California Extrapolatin’

Dear Extrapolatin’-

I have a similar question for the global warming crowd.  Why when weather is so difficult to predict 10 days out do some have such confidence in computer models that presume to predict the weather decades into the future.  Those guys should focus on next weekend, because I want to know if it is going to rain on my planned swamp picnic.  Predicting the future performance of cables is much easier than predicting long-term weather trends, and much less controversial too.  First the common threads – both predictions utilize finite volume modeling, a very computationally intensive task.  Second, many initial conditions can be established with decent engineering precision.

Now the five biggest differences:  (1) Nobody has a complete model of the weather, and you can’t measure what you don’t understand.  A patented model (See U.S. Patent 7,643,977) of cable rejuvenation is available and has been vetted against publically available data.  (Editor’s note:  I know this is what the global warming prognosticators said too, but they did not get a patent on their model.  There is a legal requirement to disclose the best mode … in other words, you can’t fudge the data with the USPTO.)  (2) The ultimate value of any weather parameter at very large times is unknown (indeterminate) and therefore can only be known by model extrapolation or by waiting for a very long time.  Neither is a satisfying prospect.  The condition at very large time for rejuvenation is unambiguous – the concentration of the treatment fluids will be zero and the impact on reliability will be zero.  (3) Weather is perturbed in unpredictable ways by cosmic radiation, sunspot activity, changes in the earth’s magnetic fields, and others.  The only significant perturbation to the rejuvenation model is the fluctuating operating temperature of the cable.  Historical weather patterns, historical load patterns, and load growth can generally be estimated with engineering accuracy. (4) The size of a finite volume used by the weather guys is a cube on the order of 8³ km³ and the Δt (time) is measured in fractional hours.  In contrast, the volume of a single finite volume in our work is 10¹⁸ times smaller and the Δt is often as small as six seconds!  Smaller time slices, much much smaller finite volumes yields more accurate results. (5) The weather is a three-dimensional problem; a cable collapses to a two-dimensional problem.

There are two papers published in 2005 and available in the Novinium Library, which describe the challenges of extrapolating cable life.  They are available at:

Accelerated Aging of Rejuvenated Cables-Part I (click here to view)

Accelerated Aging of Rejuvenated Cables-Part II (click here to view)

As mentioned previously U.S. Patent 7,643,977 published in January 2010 lays out the details of how the method introduced in the second paper is implemented.  We call the ‘977 model “MFlux,” which is short for “Mass Flux.”  A friend of mine, Dr. Dan Scott, a Stanford trained Operation Research mathematician, continues to advance the implementation of MFlux at Novinium.  The model has demonstrated that it can predict actual performance within about a plus-or-minus 10% error band.  The key paradigm shift required to understand how such extrapolations can be made requires you to abandon traditional accelerated life studies, which are loaded with inherent compromises between the effects of different accelerating variables.  For example, the permeation of fluid along the radius of a cable is profoundly impacted by the temperature.  In a traditional experiment it is difficult to balance the accelerating effects of temperature and voltage.  If one variable is accelerated by 10X and another variable is accelerated 100X, the results are not likely to be easily extrapolated.  MFlux solves that problem.  Finally a direct answer to the first part of your question, “What tests have you performed?”  We have done hundreds, perhaps thousands of tests of six primary types:

1.    We measure the permeation properties of individual components.

2.    We measure the permeation properties of component pairs.

3.    We measure the reaction kinetics of our reactive species.

4.    We measure the permeation and reaction results in one-sixth scale model cables and full size cables.

5.    We measure the dielectric impact of fluid components on cable polymers.

6.    We measure the dielectric properties of fluids on full size cables.

Most of this work is carried out at the Michigan laboratory of Dr. David Busby.  The work on full size cables is done only to validate the results of the MFlux model.  Once the permeation properties and reaction kinetics are determined for a fluid formulation we can perform virtual experiments without any compromises to accelerating factors.  We use the e-field environment, geometry, and temperature/loading environment of the actual cable in question.  No acceleration is required – time is virtual.  The time it takes to perform such a simulation is limited only by the speed of the computer and the efficiency of Dr. Scott’s MFlux algorthim.

Now for the second part of your question, “What tests have you performed to verify the 40 years of additional life, thus being able to extend a 40 year warranty?”  In every actual and virtual experiment that we have ever run, Ultrinium fluid technology outperforms the technology that has been in use for over 20 years by at least a factor of 2 and usually more like a factor of 3.  Now the old technology is good, after all it was invented by Novinium founders.  In fact it typically provides about 20 years of additional life in non-demanding applications.  Being twice or three times better than good provides us the confidence to offer a 40-year warranty.   

Extrapolating appropriately,

Thermonuclear

10 Commandments

Dear All-knowing Frog,

I read with great interest your June 9, 2010 post describing the greatest rejuvenation safety risks at …

www.novinium.com/frogblog/post/2010/06/09/Greatest-Rejuvenation-Risks.aspx.

It is clear that injection is much safer than replacement and that the steps Novinium has taken to make rejuvenation safer still are substantial and impressive, but what can be done to mitigate the risk of electrical contact?  Do you have any rules or insights from which I may learn?

Signed,

Praying in Provo

Dear Devout-one,

I sought, and was granted, guidance by the highest of authorities.  When it comes to safety we share all of our best practices with anyone that would like to learn.

The very first Novinium Value is Safety.  It states: 

“Safety is our first priority.  We provide an ever–improving safe work environment for our team members, our customers, and the public.”

The greatest safety risk we face is electrical contact.  If the ten commandments below are followed the team will be safe from all known electrical hazards.  If an individual decides to ignore one or more of these commandments that individual is not welcome on the Novinium team.  Ignoring any of these 10 commandments endangers life. More...

What to do about Neutral Corrosion

Dear Ms. Frog,

I am looking for some guidance on what percent of bare concentric neutral corrosion can be tolerated on an underground primary cable before it needs to be replaced.  I wondered if the technical staff at Novinium happens to have any ideas as to where I may get some information on this subject.

Colorado Corrosion Concern

Dear Concerned-

I have access to millions of feet of records of treated cable.  Together, my colleagues and I have analyzed over 70 million feet of rejuvenated cable that had been scanned with a time-domain reflectometer (TDR).  The incidence of neutral corrosion is way less than many suppose.  In an August 1996 article, “Neutral Corrosion Problem Overstated” in Transmission & Distribution World, Bob Gurniak of Pennsylvania Power & Light (PP&L) described this overstatement using data from the AEIC Cable Report and IEEE ICC Task Force on Cable Neutral Corrosion (6-21).  There are two notable exceptions in North America … the Appalachian Mountain Region (in PP&L territory) and Wisconsin suffer more than the normal amount of corrosion because of the low soil electrical conductivity in those regions.  The T&D article is available at …

http://tdworld.com/mag/power_neutral_corrosion_problem/index.html

... without the Table and Figures in the printed version.  I have recreated that table below and provided similar Figure 1 and Figure 2 illustrations.

Fig. 1. Technician Analyzes the TDR readout to pinpoint bad sections of cable.

Fig. 2. Waveform from the TDR.

As a rule of thumb, most circuit owners with 100% neutrals accept up to 50% local loss of neutrals.  What I mean my local loss is that neutral corrosion is almost always limited to just a few feet as shown in the photograph above.  The purposes of the neutral, enumerated in Section 4 of IEEE 1717-2007 (Guide for Detection, Mitigation, and Control of Concentric Neutral Corrosion in Medium-Voltage Underground Cables) are not compromised.

The reason for the locality of typical neutral corrosion is that the predominant cause of concentric neutral corrosion is differential aeration which is an inherently local phenomenon.  See Section 6.4 of IEEE 1717-2007.

Kindest corrosion-free regards,

Thermo

 Quantum Mechanics of Hot Electrons

Dear Great Frog,

This is Arthas Yang (兵 杨) from Shanghai, China. I am a cable design engineer. In the great presentation "Trends in Cable Rejuvenation", the "keto-enol-tautomerism" to capture hot electrons was mentioned. However, I did not quite get the concept here: How could geranylacetone capture the hot electrons, and transfer that into an electron with lower energy? If so, where did the excess energy (initial energy of electron - final energy of electron) go? In case you have any materials that could give a detailed explanation on this, shall I bother your pardon to instruct me to refer them?

Thanks and regards,

Shanghai Arthas

________________________________

Dear Arthas-

Many assume at first glance from my incredible good looks that I am like one of those beautiful, but shallow girls on a TV sitcom.  So I welcome questions of quantum mechanics, they give me a chance to demonstrate my depth.  I am more than just a pretty face.

“Cable Rejuvenation Mechanisms” available at ...

www.novinium.com/pdf/papers/ICC-Cable%20Rejuvenation%20Mechanisms.pdf

… and published at the IEEE’s Insulated Conductor Committee (ICC) in March 2006, provides a portion of the answer on page 4.  However, that paper describes a class of materials called 1,3-diketones which have since been improved upon by Novinium with the introduction of geranylacetone in Ultrinium™ formulations.  Geranyacetone works in a similar way to the 1,3-diketones, but it receives its stability from structural resonance, not keto-enol-tautomerism.  In both cases, captured electrons move from bond-to-bond within a resonant chemical structure … a bit like how a juggler moves balls from hand-to-hand.  A ball ultimately returns to the same hand, but not until after it has been passed about.  In the case of the balls, the juggler adds energy each time it touches her hands as she tosses it back into the air.  In the case of the hot electrons there is no energy added, but rather there is a small loss of energy on some electron orbital changes.  This loss of energy manifests itself as an infrared photon or as bond vibrations … in other words as heat.  The high energy electron is “cooled” and ultimately released at a lower, non-damaging energy.  How cool is that?  My friend Johann Wartusch was awarded a German patent on this technology in 1980.  A paper on the subject, “Increased Voltage Endurance of Polyolefin Insulating Materials by Means of Voltage Stabilizers” was published as an IEEE transaction paper (CHI496-9/80/0000-0216) in 1980.

Covalently yours,

Thermonuclear

How to Inject

Dear Ms. Frog,

How does Novinium actually inject cables?  What are the steps?  What are the differences between the Novinium injection process and the older process?

Curieux in Québec

Dear Curieux-

I speak Latin, Australian, and English.  I had to look up curieux to find out it means curious.  I am curieux too, why the French eat about 200 million frog legs a year!  That’s 100 million of my kin.  Because you are from Quebec, not France, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and answer your questions.  Please, if you have kin in the old world, encourage them to eat flies, crickets, and fish … these are all more palatable and morally unobjectionable.

There is more than one way to fillet a fish and there is more than one way to inject cables.  At least there is more than one way that Novinium injects cables.  Novinium has patented technologies that make us the only rejuvenation supplier that has more than a single injection method for URD cables.  No one-size-fits-all mentality here.  We use an improved version of the over-two-decade old unsustained rejuvenation method, let’s call it “improved-UPR,” and we use the newest approach called sustained pressure rejuvenation or “SPR.”  In all Novinium injection methods there are no soak periods.  Eliminating the soak period makes the process safer, faster, and better.  I created three knonow (pronounced know-now) videos for you, Curieux, to show you how these two processes are implemented.   Why three videos for two processes you might ask?  An exciting capability was spawned by the advent of SPR.  Inject-on-fault or post-failure injection is now practical.  The FERC recognizes that application of Novinium technology is a capital item for post-failure injection.  Post-failure injection has a slightly different flavor than when it is applied proactively and preventatively and hence there are two “How-to” knonow modules for SPR.  Check out all three.

Now you might wonder how you should decide between the two injection paradigms.  Actually you don’t have to, because the best choice is to use them both in a fully integrated test, treat, and replace program available only from Novinium and Novinium partners.  I am working on a knonow module which will help you optimize a tailored solution to your infrastructure reliability needs.  This knonow module will be available within the next 30 days.  I will make a new blog entry to announce its arrival.  In the mean time, contact me, your favorite frog, and I will lead you through the decision process.

As for the differences, they are many, and they are profound.   First the old method was invented by Novinium founders and their colleagues over two decades ago – the old method is good, but technology has moved on.  There are better and best solutions available exclusively from Novinium.  These better and best approaches enjoy substantial safety benefits.  See my recent blog entry at ...

http://www.novinium.com/frogblog/post/2010/06/09/Greatest-Rejuvenation-Risks.aspx 

... and a thorough analysis of the risks associates with the major rejuvenation paradigms at ...

www.novinium.com/pdf/papers/Rejuvenation_Hazards_Analysis.pdf.

The most significant differences are the elimination of the soak period, the reduced number of exposures to high voltage electrical equipment, the elimination of flammable fluids, and the improved post-injection reliability of the newest chemical advancements.

Vive la différence,

Thermo

Biggest Risk is Electrical

Dear Soggy Froggy,

What are the greatest risks associated with rejuvenation of medium voltage power cables?

High and Dry in Denver

Dear Dry-

It is true that my beautiful wet skin is a disadvantage near electricity.  That is why I let my journeyman lineman colleagues do most of the work.  I am the brains and the beauty behind them.  Click on the video link below where I demonstrate the greatest risk of rejuvenation – and don’t try this at home.

Rejuvenation is inherently safer than replacement.  When rejuvenating cable the electrical risk is the biggest risk by far.  For a thorough description of all of the dimensions of rejuvenation safety, including even more about electrical contact, my colleagues, Rich and Glen provide an 84-page treatise, “A Comparison of Rejuvenation Hazards & Compatibility.” That tome is available on-line at:  www.novinium.com/pdf/papers/Rejuvenation_Hazards_Analysis.pdf.

From that document I have copied the graph below.  Don’t worry there will not be a quiz and you do not need to pull out your reading glasses.  The risks are enumerated and categorized in the aforementioned tome, and the risk identified as “1.1” is the electrical contact risk.  You will find 1.1 in the upper-right-hand corner of the figure.  All of the other risks pale by comparison and lie below and to the left of the electrical contact risk.  The scales are logarithmic, so differences in risk assesments are larger than they appear.

Patented Novinium technology reduces exposure to this risk in several ways.  First the period of time that injection bottles are connected to energized cables is considerably less than with older approaches.  The probability that a leak will occur is related to the length of time that a feed or a soak bottle is connected to a cable.  Whether utilizing Novinium’s patented sustained pressure rejuvenation (SPR) or the older unsustained pressure rejuvenation (UPR), Novinium’s patented catalyst technology eliminates the need for a soak period completely.  Approaches that don’t utilize Novinium’s patented catalyst technology require soak periods of 60 days or more for most 7-strand and 19-strand conductors.  Utilizing Novinium technology typically reduces the exposure to leaking fluids over 60 times. When UPR is utilized Novinium also uses patent pending technology to mitigate the probability of injection port flashover.  The picture nearby shows a low amperage laboratory flashover.  The mitigation technology is called a reticular flash preventer or RFP.  This issue and the solution are described in some detail at ...

http://www.novinium.com/pdf/papers/Advancements_in_200-amp_injection_elbows.pdf.

My advice to you is to never compromise safety.  State-of-the-art patented and patent pending technology, soak-free injection processes, and RFP flash-over prevention are available only from Novinium and our partners.

Minimize your exposure,

Thermo

What does Novinium mean?

Dear All Knowing Bull,

What does Novinium mean?  Is there a language derivation, or is it fictitious?

Wondering Walter

Dear Wonderer-

Don’t you speak Latin?  “Nôvî” is Latin for “to get knowledge of, become acquainted with, come to know, learn, discern” or “novîs” is Latin for “new, not old, young, fresh, recent” … I like to combine the two ideas into “fresh knowledge”.  Finally the “-inium” suffix means “belong to; be involved in; material; element”, so combining all three ideas gets you “fresh knowledge of materials,” which I believe is a fine moniker for a company that has changed the face of rejuvenation.  As of today, June 9, 2010, Novinium has nine granted and active* U.S. patents on cable rejuvenation technology and still more pending.  That is more active* U.S. patents than all the other rejuvenation patent holders in the world combined!  The King is dead, long live the King!  Ipso facto, fresh material knowledge – Novinium.

Sic semper tyrannis,

Thermo

*An active patent is an unexpired patent in which the claims are being practiced.

Cole Hammond - When Experience Counts

Dealing with high voltage cables demands rigorous training and lots of experience.  Injecting those same cables requires another layer of expertise layered on top of the medium and high voltage line experience.  Novinium is staffed with experienced experts … the best in the world.  What about the case where the injection is going to occur on the cable under several hundred meters of water.  Who are you going to call?  If its fresh water you should call me – I am as at home in the water as I am on land, but salt water irritates my sensitive skin.  A girl has to look after her skin.  Now most of my human friends prefer to stay in the boat when dealing with submarine cables, but my friend Cole Hammond is as likely in the water as I am!  I am not comfortable with the whole topic of interspecies relationships, but Cole gets me wondering.

Cole is a journeyman-lineman and has been injecting cables for over a decade.  He has had his Ocean Corporation Commercial Diving Certification even longer.  If you think electricity and water don’t mix you should spend some quality time with Mr. Hammond.

The world’s most experienced and capable rejuvenation teams are at Novinium, because that is where the latest technology is practiced.  Only Novinium can supply the older unsustained pressure rejuvenation (UPR) process and the newer sustained pressure rejuvenation (SPR) process.  Only Novinium can supply older fluid injection technologies and the most modern formulations that are tailored to the unique needs of each circuit.  Cole and his colleagues are the most experienced team to deliver the full range of injection technologies in the world.

Cole used to work for the other rejuvenation supplier, so I asked him what the big differences he perceived between the two approaches.  Cole said, “First – if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.  The one-size-fits-all-model I practiced at the old firm is quaint in comparison to the way I tailor the chemistry and the process to the needs of my customers.   Second, the old process was invented over two decades ago and has not changed appreciably since then.  Compare that same-old-same-old stasis to my experience here, where we are introducing new products, improved chemistry, and new injection methods at a dizzying pace.  Improvements come continuously … that makes working at Novinium much more enjoyable because I keep learning and learning.”

Experience does count,

Thermo