Page 357 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

332 Cha pte r Ei g h tee n

wear and tear on roads, and in many cases, reduced the re -
quired size of access roads.
• AEP used selective right-of-way maintenance, only remov-
ing tall-growing incompatible species while leaving red buds
and dogwoods and other low-growing species. In the future,
the right-of-way will be maintained with a backpack applica-
tion of herbicides only to incompatible species.

The final design of the Wyoming-Jacksons Ferry line included
333 transmission towers with an average height of 132 feet. A total of
4,750 tons of conductor were used, spanning 1,620 miles of wire. The
line includes 9,876 spacer dampers, which hold the line in a perfect
hexagon (see Figure 18.6). The design uses an innovative six-bundle
conductor configuration, which reduces audible noise to about half
that of earlier four-bundle configurations.

Industrial Ecology in Action
An unusual example of industrial ecology—turning wastes into
feedstocks—has taken shape in Moundsville, West Virginia, thanks
to a partnership between American Electric Power and CertainTeed,
a subsidiary of St. Gobain. Gypsum is a key input to the manufac-
ture of wallboard, and also happens to be a residual from flue gas
desulfurization (FGD) in coal-fired electric power plants. To take

FIGURE 18.6 Hexagonal design of Wyoming-Jacksons Ferry high-voltage
power lines.