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Transmission & Distribution
Area of practice · Donald W. Parnell, PE
High-voltage transmission corridor and structure design for a utility consulting firm, distribution-system work for an electric membership cooperative, and transmission and distribution interfaces at substations.
Transmission
High-voltage transmission corridors and structures
Mr. Parnell’s principal employer in transmission and distribution was Booth & Associates in Raleigh, North Carolina, a consulting engineering firm serving electric cooperatives and utilities. His work there was on high-voltage transmission corridors: the routed right-of-way along which the line runs, the spotting of structures along it, and the design of the tall structures themselves, which must carry the conductors at their required clearances while resisting the overturning forces from wind on the structure and conductors and from catenary loading under ice and unbalanced-tension conditions. The foundation side of that structure design is described under Foundations; the corridor and structure work belongs here.
Distribution
Cooperative distribution-system work
Mr. Parnell also worked for Piedmont Electric Membership Corporation, the member-owned distribution cooperative headquartered in Hillsborough, North Carolina, serving parts of Alamance, Caswell, Durham, Granville, Orange, and Person counties. A distribution cooperative’s engineering is almost entirely transmission and distribution: the feeders leaving its delivery substations, the overhead pole lines and underground runs that carry them through rural and suburban territory, the transformers, sectionalizing, and services along them, and the system maps that record all of it. His work at Piedmont was predominantly of this kind.
Utility Support
Transmission and distribution work for an investor-owned utility
Through Engineering Design Services in Raleigh, Mr. Parnell had minor involvement in transmission and distribution work for Carolina Power & Light, now part of Duke Energy, alongside the spill-prevention and nuclear-facility work for that utility recorded under Environmental and Process Piping.
Substation Interface
Where transmission and distribution meet the substation
Across the substation site-development projects at the City of Austin Electric Utility Department, later Austin Energy, the transmission and distribution systems entered and left the yard: incoming transmission lines terminated on dead-end structures and passed through the high-side switching to the transformers, and distribution feeders left the low side to the getaway structures or underground exits. Locating those terminations and getaways, and the structures and clearances they require, was part of the yard layout on each site, and is described further under Substation Design.
About this record. This site is a working record of professional experience, maintained to verify subject-matter background. Areas of practice are reached from the menu above. The record is expanded as additional work history is documented.
Donald W. Parnell, PE | North Carolina PE No. 33878