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Land & Water Management
Seeding a dangerous time on farms
In the period of April to June many broad-acre farmers will be working to get their crops underway. While it is a promising time it is also a dangerous moment on the farm. Powerlines are a common sight across South Australian farms and rural properties, with SA Power Networks’ distribution network comprising sub-transmission lines at 66,000 Volts and 33,000 Volts, and Single Wire Earth Return, or SWER lines, which carry 19,000 volts and
constitute about 30% of the SA electricity distribution network. These SWER lines are difficult to see as they are thin, single lines tightly strung between poles that are often hundreds of metres apart. “People would be surprised how often we respond to outages that occur during preparation and seeding activity on farms,” said Paul Roberts, Corporate Affairs Manager for SA Power Networks. “We record about 20 on-farm incidents a year where
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