Melt ice with variable resistance wire

A new way to keep ice off your antenna and transmission lines is on the horizon.

This thanks to a group of New England researchers and a
businessman with a vision.

Newsline's Jeff Clark, K8JAC, tells us about this new technology that might some day keep your antenna from falling down in an ice storm:

Dartmouth engineering professor and entrepreneur Victor Petrenko and his colleagues at Ice Engineering in Lebanon, New Hampshire, have invented a way to cheaply and effectively keep ice off power lines.

The new proprietary technology is called a variable resistance cable de-icing system. With only minor cable modifications plus some off-the-shelf electronics, the system switches the electrical resistance of a standard power line from low to high. The high resistance automatically creates heat to melt ice build-up or keep it from forming in the first place.

Ice Engineering plans to install and test a full-scale system prototype on a section of power line in Russia, in late January. The company is also currently negotiating full-scale installations of in other regions of Russia and in China.

Jeff Clark, K8JAC
ARNewsline

No word yet as to if and when a personal version of this new technology will be available to the ham in the ice cold street.

Source: ARNewsline, Science OnLine