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General Information
In operation since 1974, SBB has a wide experience in the manufacturing of metal products of all kinds, made to customers’ specifications. In 1994, leveraging our know-how of metal working, we also started designing and manufacturing Emergency Restoration Systems (ERS). ERS are ultra-light modular aluminum structures that can be used to overcome quite a few challenges: Generally, when electrical transmission is interrupted because one or several transmission towers are damaged, there is a high economical cost for the utility company (i.e. penalties for every day of non-transmission). However, there are also high political and social costs to such a situation.^ This represents an opportunity for a quick and efficient solution to temporarily replace damaged towers, until the utility company can remove the damaged tower, build a new foundation, transport the new tower to the site and install it. This process can take as little as 1 or 2 weeks (tower in stock, 24h shifts, efficient teams) or as long as 5 or 6 weeks. By using SBB ERS, the transmission towers can be replaced in just a few hours by creating a by-pass and power transmission will be resumed much faster than with the traditional methods. When the new transmission tower is installed, the SBB towers can be removed as quickly as they were installed and put back in a container until the next use. Our towers are so versatile than they can be used for various applications such as: - Restoring power following a disaster (flood, hurricane, war, etc…)
- Conducting scheduled maintenance work on existing towers without major interruptions
- Building temporary line extensions in a fast & efficient way (no civil engineering work required)
- Temporarily linking villages or remote locations (mining sites) to the main grid
- Serving as meteorological towers in wind energy applications
- Serving quite a few other purposes (army, site surveillance, etc…)
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