Texas Electric Cooperatives, Inc., (TEC) developed the Hybrid utility pole to meet the qualitative performance standards of climb-abihty and weather-ability. The Hybrid pole is a steam conditioned southern yellow pine pole, treated to AWPA and RUS standards with CCA, followed by a light treatment with creosote. Three charges of 40c4 and three charges of 40c5 were treated in the first test of this new process. These six charges generated poles with low, medium, and high penetrations of creosote, and tracked to fifteen customer locations, mostly in Texas. Each pole was tagged with a unique identification number at the time of manufacture for future evaluation. TEC retained Osmose to provide a baseline inspection of these poles. Osmose located 563 of 653 poles, as the un-located poles inadequately tracked by the end users. Osmose provided GPS location data, photographs, and a record of field and customer observations to TEC. Osmose also collected 63 penetration core samples and provided them to TEC. Kerr Labs inspected the core samples and provided penetration readings to TEC. Individual penetration readings at the time of manufacture were compared with the new penetration readings from the field. No correlation was observed. All but one of the fieldpenetration readings were one inch or greater.
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