| Power plant products


Polesaver sells its one millionth protection sleeve in Africa


Polesaver, which makes wood life-extension products, has announced the delivery of its millionth Rot-Guard sleeve into Africa – marking a major milestone in the company’s ‘mission’ to improve the reliability, longevity, and cost-efficiency of wooden utility poles across the continent. For over 30 years, Polesaver has provided its dual-layer ground-line barrier sleeves to utilities and rural electrification projects worldwide. Across Africa, these sleeves are helping utilities overcome the challenges of fungal decay, termite damage, and harsh soil conditions, which are long known to cause premature pole failures and high pole replacement costs.


The use of wooden poles remains important in electrification efforts across Africa owing to their availability and ease of deployment. However, their durability is often compromised


by biological threats and environmental stress. Polesaver sleeves provide a simple, cost-effective solution to these challenges – enabling utilities to maintain wooden pole infrastructure with a level of confidence. Ground-line decay is the biggest cause of wooden pole failure. Installing double layered protective sleeves is known to extend asset service life by decades, reducing downtime and keeping communities connected. Installations to date in Africa include over 300 000 sleeves installed since 2016 in Cameroon, under a long-standing partnership with ENEO for whom savings to date are estimated to exceed $11 million: and the installation of over 400 000 Rot-Guard protected poles in Uganda, in a major rollout by utility company Umeme as part of a nationwide grid expansion.


Advanced sealing for landmark UK CCS project


John Crane, a prominent supplier of rotating equipment solutions, and a business of Smiths Group plc, is to support a significant CCS initiative in the UK by providing advanced dry gas sealing


technology to enable high-performance CO2 compression.


As part of the project scope, John Crane is delivering six Type 28XP dry gas seals for fitting to centrifugal compressors at a new CO2


permanently store carbon dioxide captured from industrial plants across the North West of England and North Wales.


The facility is expected to serve as a critical enabler of the UK’s energy transition, acting as a central hub for CO2


transportation and storage


compression facility located in North Wales. These compressors are a key part of the infrastructure required to transport and


under the seabed in depleted offshore fields. With the project recently reaching financial close, it marks a major step forward in delivering low-carbon infrastructure to support industrial decarbonisation.


John Crane’s Type 28XP dry gas seals are


engineered for the rigorous demands of CO2 supercritical CO2


and applications, claiming to offer


outstanding reliability, emissions reduction, and minimal maintenance requirements, exhibiting proven performance in harsh operating environments.


John Crane has a long history in the field of sealing technologies for CO2


and sCO2


compression, which makes it a trusted partner in complex, mission-critical applications. It continues to play a central role in the deployment of CCS infrastructure globally.


The UK’s first offshore wind farm to use recyclable rotor blades


RWE and turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa have driven ‘a new era’ of wind turbine innovation with the first ever large-scale installation of recyclable blades at a UK offshore wind farm. The rotor blades are made using an innovative resin which makes it possible, at the end of the blade’s operating life, to easily separate the various blade materials from the other components which can then be recycled – for example into the manufacture of vehicle components, and consumer goods like bicycle helmets and suitcases.


The technical process by which the recyclable blades are made was devised by Siemens Gamesa, which manufactures the blades for the Sofia array at its facility in Hull, UK. Following an agreement signed in 2023 with Siemens Gamesa, RWE’s Sofia offshore wind


farm, located off the UK’s north-east coast, is now being fitted with a total of 150 recyclable blades, distributed across 50 of its 100 wind turbines. Already 50% of the blades have been fitted at the wind farm, with Siemens Gamesa continuing installation throughout the rest of the year. The deployment of these recyclable blades on such a scale builds on RWE’s world-first installation of the product at the company’s Kaskasi offshore wind farm, in Germany. Offshore construction at Sofia is progressing well and is being undertaken by Siemens Gamesa using the specialist vessel Wind Peak, which is operated by Cadeler out of the Port of Hull. At 1.4 GW maximum installed capacity, Sofia is one of RWE’s largest offshore wind farms currently in construction and is located on Dogger Bank in the central North Sea, 195 km


off the North East coast of the UK. The project is employing the Siemens Gamesa SG 14-222 turbines with 108 metre long turbine blades and a 222-metre rotor diameter. The wind farm is scheduled for completion during 2026.


www.modernpowersystems.com | September 2025 | 49


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