CPTC....The article below says that CPTC expects to produce 100 miles of cable A DAY in the years following 2005. That ='s 36,500 miles a year. Kingman paid $2.7 million for a 21-mile line. That ='s $128,571 a mile.
100 miles a day x 365 (day's in a year) = 36,500 miles of cable. Multiply that by $128,571 and you get $4,6928,415,000 in revenues.
Let's say they just do an average of 50 miles a day. Your still looking at over $2 BILLION in sales. If CPTC only get's half of that, it' still over $1 BILLION in sales. This doesn't even count poles.
Am I figuring this right?
Very long on CPTC as they ramp up and I sit here dreaming....
"For 2005, CTC expects to have several hundred miles of cable produced, but in the following years, CTC expects the rate of production will be a hundred miles of cable a day."
Here's the full article, from sometime last year (lost the link)....
Two new transmission cables reaching
market; China seen as strong opportunity
Developers of two new transmission
cables in the works for years
are about to enter the commercial market
with the prospect of easing the
worry over national grid congestion
and capacity.
Both companies report that their
cables have at least twice the capacity
of traditional cable and will lower utilities’
transmission costs by eliminating
the need for additional lines or new line
routes. Both claim the cables have
minimal sag at high temperatures
and are not affected by severe
weather.
The cable developed by Composite
Technology Corp. (CTC),
known as ACCC, has a composite
core wrapped with trapezoidal
shaped aluminum
wire while 3M has developed
cable called in
shorthand ACCR with a core of a ceramic
fiber-reinforced aluminum
wrapped in aluminum-zirconium
wires (ETW, 9/6).
Composite Technology is delivering
10 miles of cable by mid-
November to two utilities, in Arizona
and New York, for installation by the
end of the year. 3M is sending cable
to Xcel Energy to install on a 10-mile
transmission line in the Twin Cities
area next year. Both 3M and Xcel
Energy are headquartered in Minnesota.
The potential for the cable is
huge, CTC believes. CTC estimates
that the worldwide market for the
cable is worth $50 billion. The company
has already reached a memorandum
of understanding with China
to manufacture in China 18,000
miles of cable.
“They [China] are spending billions
on grid development,” CTC
President and CEO Bill Arrington
said. “It could be a couple billiondollar
market.”
For 2005, CTC expects to have
several hundred miles of cable produced,
but in the following years,
CTC expects the rate of production
will be a hundred miles of cable a
day.
“The response [to the product]
is ramping up dramatically,” said
Arrington. The company is now getting
50 calls a day when previously
“we had gotten about that in a
week,” he said.
CTC signed an agreement Oct.
4 with General Cable Industries to
manufacture and distribute the cable
through 2007. “We will produce the
core material — the composite — and
they will wrap the aluminum around
it,” Arrington said. “We’re now developing
a joint marketing strategy
and in January after the national
sales meeting we will roll it out fullscale.”
At 3M, the company expects to
have its 10 miles for Xcel Energy installed
in mid-2005. As to the future
beyond next year, 3M’s business
development manager for the composite
conductor program, Tracy
Anderson, declined to speculate,
saying, “We don’t talk about sales
projections. He added that “application
[of the product] was large.”
Each developer touted his
company’s product as the better
one.
Arrington said the CTC product
is less expensive than the 3M product,
which he also faulted as “brittle.”
Anderson said the 3M product has a
high-temperature metal core, not a
polymer matrix core (as CTC’s), and
“it’s flexible. We believe it’s the best.”
Both companies have developed
new splices and dead-ends to use
with the new cables and have
worked to make these as similar as
the current products so that installation
would not pose any problems.
“There has been no problem in
the field” with the CTC cable when
testing has been done, Arrington
said. The two miles of cable that
were installed at an Electric Power
Research Institute facility in Hazlet,
Texas, “went up just fine, the linemen
told us,” Arrington said. The
3,000-foot installation on existing
poles of the Holland, Mich., city utility,
went fine as well, linemen reported,
Arrington said.
The main competition to the two
products is the traditional ASCR line,
both Arrington and Anderson
agreed.
Right now, utilities can re-tension
certain segments of a line if they
need to or they can raise towers,
Anderson said. Taking care of a sagging
line by replacing it with the new
product is not a black and white situation,
he said.
Arrington found “interesting” the
caution of utilities over using materials
composite technology. “Utilities
must start looking at new technologies,”
he said.
The line could eliminate the need
for another power plant, as a company
could just upgrade its
transmission lines, Arrington suggested.
The new line is more expensive,
but Arrington said the cost in laying
new line should factor in the fewer
number of towers that the CTC line
will need. “On average, a [ACCC] line
at the same height can eliminate
16% of the structures,” he said. A
lattice steel tower can cost $800,000
to $1 million and a 40-meter pole for
a 230-kV lined can cost $250,000,
he said, so the savings would be significant.
Poles will still be needed and the
next project for CTC will be developing
a new pole using the same
composite of glass fibers and resin,
which will make them lighter, stronger
and easier to work with,
Arrington said.
“In the next 10 years, California
must replace its wooden poles,” he
said. Southern California Edison
alone has 6 million wooden poles,
he noted. SN
