Optical Ground Wire Explained For Fiber Techs Part 1

We talk with TJ Pate from Florida Power and Light about OPGW optical ground wire and why installing fiber on transmission towers demands a different level of planning, safety, and precision. We break down how utility fiber gets built, tested, and repaired across massive distances, plus the skills that separate average troubleshooting from confident, fast problem solving. 

• what OPGW is and how it replaces the static ground wire on transmission lines 
• why utilities use OPGW for long-distance fiber to substations and rural sites 
• how dark fiber and leased circuits can become a revenue stream 
• safety steps around substations including transient voltage checks and bonding 
• remote jobsite logistics including structure numbers, access roads, sand, and swamp conditions 
• why OPGW is an exact-measurement workflow with limited slack and expensive rework 
• how bucket truck work fits into enclosure placement while splicing stays ground-based 
• why “one and done” depends on OLTS, OTDR, and IOLM testing before you leave 
• how BICSI Cable Skills Challenge habits improve sequencing, speed awareness, and tool discipline 
• how to find fiber cuts by reading true OTDR traces and pairing distance with maps 
• what it means to “send a 2K tone” and how fiber identifier tools help in outside plant 

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Transcript

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Why Fiber On Power Towers

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey Warmonkeys, welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Cabling. You know, most low voltage technicians, most fiber technicians, they spend their careers pulling cable through conduit and ladder rack and cable tray and up and down the floors in a building. But what happens when that fiber is installed on top of a 50,000 volt transmission tower? Yeah, the stakes get a little bit higher, don't they? So today we're talking about OPGW, optical ground wire, and one of the most rugged types of fiber out there, one of the most misunderstood types of fiber out there, and I brought on an expert.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Stay connected. Stay connected. Do it right.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

So welcome to the show where we tackle the tough questions submitted by apprentices, installers, technicians, project managers, estimators, designers, customers. We're connecting at the human level so that we can connect the world. If you're watching this show on YouTube, would you mind hitting the subscribe button and the bell button to be notified when new content is being produced? If you're listening to us on one of the audio podcast platforms, would you mind leaving us a five-star rating? Those simple little steps help us take on the algorithm so we can educate, encourage, and enrich the lives of people in the ICT industry. Wednesday nights, 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, what are you doing? You know I do a live stream on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, every Facebook, everywhere I can figure out where to send a stream where you get to ask your favorite RCDD. And you know that's me. Your favorite RCDD questions on installation, certification, design, credentialing. I even do career path questions. But I can hear now, but Chuck, I'm driving my truck home on Wednesday nights at 6 p.m. Relax. Breathe in, breathe out. I record them and you can watch them at your convenience. And finally, while this show is free and will always remain free, if you find value in this content, we click on that QR code right there. You can buy me a cup of coffee. You can even schedule a 15-minute one-on-one call with me after hours, of course, to help support the show.

Discovering OPGW And The Stakes

SPEAKER_01 2:32

OPGW. That's one of those acronyms that, you know, I only learned just literally like two years ago. May maybe maybe three if I'm really stretching it. And the first time I heard it, a good friend of mine, TJ, said something about OPGW. Have you ever heard of that? I'm like, I ain't never heard of OPGW. I don't even know what that what the heck is that? They're putting fiber along high-powered transmission lines going across the country. So I got to thinking, well, number one, that's gotta be some pretty rugged cable. Number two, there's gotta be some pretty stout procedures to deal with people's safety and how to install it and terminate it. And there's not many people that know OPGW. So I figured, you know what? I gotta bring on the best.

Meet TJ Pate And His Role

SPEAKER_01 3:15

TJ Pate, return time visitor, cabling, weeks at cabling skills challenge, three-time winner, back to the podcast. TJ, welcome back, my friend. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Thanks, Chuck. Thanks for having me on, sir. Doing good. Had a beautiful day.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

My pleasure. Yeah, yes, it is a beautiful day. I actually went out for lunch, and uh, it's one of those typical Florida 95 degrees, but with the humidity, it's like 115 degrees outside. Yes, typical Florida day out there. It's if I'd be working outside, it would be a uh a three-shirk day. Absolutely absolutely without it. So why don't you go and give us exactly why don't you go and give us the uh introduction? Who's TJ Pate and why should we listen to you? Go.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Well, I'm TJ Pate. I work for my day job is Florida Power and Light. I'm a communications technician for them. We uh our main role is to support our fiber infrastructure between all of our substations and our offices across Northwest Florida and across all of Florida. And uh our main service area that we provide in is all of North Florida. So we make sure that the fiber stays working and we have any kind of issues. Uh like Chuck said, I'm big in Bixie. Um on a Bixie uh committee. I'm three-time cabling skills champion, and now I'm a judge for cabling skills, and I think it's I find it to be an honor to be a part of the cabling skills competition. So, and now that I've been doing OPGW, I just found something that I really, really enjoy and can't get enough of. And I actually just finished up another install um this morning that we'll talk about here in a little while of a 96 strand OPGW, a 96 strand um fiber. It's one single strand OPGW, but with 96 strands of fiber inside of it. So I'll look forward to talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Yeah, yeah, the thing I like is you know, when I talk to you about OPGW is, you know, in in class, you know, you hear things, single book can go 50 miles without having to be repeated. And you hear all these really long distances. But yes, most enterprise fiber techs maybe 500 feet, maybe a thousand feet, maybe two thousand feet. They're not going 50 miles, but you and I constantly talk about runs that you shoot that are you know 48 miles, 49 miles, 50 miles. And it's just it amazes me because you're actually putting putting to use the theory that a lot of us, people like me, trainers, talk about all the time. You know, so let's let's get into the you know the subject first.

What OPGW Is And Why

SPEAKER_01 5:44

OPGW. What the heck is that?

SPEAKER_02 5:48

So OPGW is optical ground wire. So when you see these high transmission lines, instead of your you know, conventional distribution power, your ground wire is your bottom wire going through your neighborhood, right? Your top wires are your power wires. So it's on a transmission line, it's flipped. So your lower lines are your high power lines carrying the voltage, and your top wire is your ground wire, and that is your common ground to your common bond to ground across the system. Well, when they take out the static wire, they put in OPTW. It takes the place of the normal ground wire. So we have our fiber inside of that ground wire, and we are still the ground for the system for lightning strikes, for static, just for common bond, we are still that that bond to ground. So, and the space is already there, so they've utilized it and put fiber in so we can get fiber everywhere we need, you know, to rural areas, to substations that are out in the middle of anywhere or running through the city. You'll see it running through a lot of cities. And it's just a good use of space. And rather than having to go underground, a lot of these transmission lines are hardened, you know, against you know, hurricanes we see in Florida. So it's just a good use of space to you know to put fiber and have have a way to get you know, transmit you know, fiber across uh long distances. And the space is already cleared, so why not?

SPEAKER_01 7:08

The the data that's being transmitted across PGW, that's not your cable TV service. That's just network stuff for the power company, correct?

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Yes, yeah, and there's there's utilities all over the country that use it for you know their their own communications, and then there's they lease circuits out. So you'll have you know, IFN, MCI just leasing dark fibers, Unity leasing dark fibers, because they need that that connectivity. So there's all kinds of information transferring over it. And you know, data centers lease circuits. Uh it's just who has the availability. And then they say, well, we need we need to lease circuits and lease strands, and that's it can be any customer. As long as you need fiber connected from point A to point B and it's there, they'll lease the circuits.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Well, that sounds like it could be another revenue stream for the power company bringing in circuits like that. What kind of fiber counts are you typically talk talking about when you're installing OPGW?

SPEAKER_02 8:02

So it can our normal fiber count is in between anywhere between 48 to 96 strands. But there is OPGW out there that does go 244 strands because we're we're limited on space inside the wire and weight. I mean, it's already heavy. So the more fiber doesn't sound heavy, but the more you pack in there, you're going to add the weight. So it's all about your spans and your structures being able to hold up the weight of the OPGW because it's a pound a foot.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Wow. Wow, that's that's that's close to 900 pair copper. Copper is a pound and a half per foot. So and and you know, a lot of people are you may not realize that people who aren't really familiar with fiber, but you know, we can put this fiber in with these transmission lines because fiber is pretty much immune to EMI because it's it's it's glass, it's it's photon, not uh, not electron. So it's a great, it's a great way. The pathways already established that you don't have to worry about getting right-of-ways from you know 15 different you know, property owners and stuff like this, and and you and for example with companies like you work for, you know, you got pathways from from Miami all the way up to Tallahassee. And that's a that's a pretty good long distance. That so if you have somebody building a data center and they want to have those connectivities, I never thought that they leased out those lines. That's that's actually a pretty good thing. Um so most people are doing fiber, they know the normal routine of setting up and for for you know for pulling fiber and for testing fiber and stuff. I gotta imagine, I gotta imagine it's a little bit different for OPG Jug.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Let's take a short break.

Advertising Break And Back

SPEAKER_00 9:34

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Safety Steps Near High Voltage

SPEAKER_00 10:19

What's it like working around those those power lines?

SPEAKER_02 10:22

It's it's daunting. You know, the first time I walked into a really big substation and you hear the static electricity, you know, humming in the up and in the air, it's really it makes you be very aware of your surroundings. But our normal typical, we go to a splice point, first thing we do is we check for you know transient voltage and make sure there's no kind of load on the line, and because you will get transient voltage, and uh then we bond to ground, first thing we do is we bond to ground, even as it is the bond, we go ahead and bond it out to make sure we're protected. And then we're we're outdoors, so there is no being inside of the air conditioning at first because you do all our all your prep work outside of the uh of the splice lab. So you have to take 15 foot off once you have your length established to go into your enclosure. It's got to be very precise because we go up on a coil bracket and we wrap the wrap the fiber around the coil bracket, then it goes up into the bottom of our enclosure, and it's got to be very precise, or that you know, your loop's gonna be weird, it's not gonna look right, it's not gonna hang, and it's not just not gonna look professional. So, you know, it's a two-man crew, you know, for safety, and you start working your way into your stainless steel buffer tubes.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

You know, I I've traveled pretty much the whole state. Um because I go camping a lot. So I've been camping up in the Panhandle, I've gone to Payne's Prairie, I've gone down to Fort Lauderdale, so I've driven all across the country, like all across the state, and I've seen the transmission power lines, and some of them aren't in necessarily in dense populated areas, out in the rural

Reaching Remote Splice Locations

SPEAKER_01 12:00

country. What kind of crew coordination do you have to do when you're working on maybe a fiber termination that might be out in the middle of the wilderness somewhere?

SPEAKER_02 12:09

So we we do a lot out in the middle of the wilderness. You know, it's a 45-minute drive just to get to the road to turn off of the paved road, go out to the lease to find where you've got to go. And we do a lot of coordination with the crews, the contractors that pull in the fiber and they'll let us know hey, it's gonna be a structure number 800, okay, and your next one's gonna be a structure 825 or 850. And they will coordinate that with us and we will find it on Google Maps and figure out, okay, how do we get there? You know, sometimes we can't drive a truck there to get the splice lab there, and they'll have a bulldozer and we'll meet one of the guys in the crew and they'll pull our splice trailer to it with a bulldozer because it's Florida, it's swampy, it's wet. You know, it's that's just where it ended up happening. It's just a little too wet for us to drive back to. We make, we make do, you know, they get us the splice lab there, and then we set up in the driest area we can and um start getting to work. And it's it's it's it's a lot of coordination, but as long as you have a good, strong crew and everybody, you know, can work together and communicate, that's that's what the goal is. Is okay, we're gonna do it in this order, we're gonna be methodical about it, and uh, we're gonna do it once and be done with it and move on to the next spot.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

I gotta imagine you have some industrial grade uh mosquito spray for for some of the places you go to. You know, most people they think of Florida and they think swamps, and and there are a lot of swamps in Florida, but to me, the the the the vast majority of the state of Florida is myaca sand. And myaca sand, it is it's like shit it's like sugary sand. I drive my truck, my my yard's myaka sand. And I drive my truck, I get almost stuck in my own driveway just trying to get on my driveway with my four-wheel drive truck. So I couldn't even I couldn't even imagine pulling a you know is a fiber splice tray trying to get some of the areas that you get to.

SPEAKER_02 13:56

Yeah, it's a it's a lot of four-wheel drive and a lot of, thank Lord, I was raised in Florida and I know how to drive in the sand. And uh once you start going, don't stop. Keep it rolling, keep keep the truck moving. If you have momentum, keep it going to get on some hard ground. Which a lot of times they will make they will lay mats down for us so we actually have a pathway to get in. And but once those mats are up, it you can hang it up. You're you're not gonna get back in there.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Yeah, it's the same way for driving in snow. You know, once you get that momentum going, keep it going. Don't hit the brakes, don't turn the wheels, just keep going

Why OPGW Requires Exact Prep

SPEAKER_01 14:27

straight. So let's let's talk about you know what makes OPGW installations uh because you've done both. You used to work for uh, I don't know if you want to say, but you used to work for uh uh do a lot of enterprise type of network cabling, copper and fiber. And so now you're doing this OPGW. So what makes it different between this enterprise stuff and the OPGW?

SPEAKER_02 14:47

The biggest difference for me is OPGW is exact. We have exact measurements to where this is exactly where our connector has to go because the connector goes into our enclosure and it is a hard set spot. Like there's there that we don't have a lot of grace where that goes to where we, if you're doing an inside plant fiber, you know, you can you can kind of fudge it a little bit and have your slower sloop on top of your rack and say, okay, well, I got a little too much. Well, I can push it back up into the rack, I can make it look pretty, it look professional. Or my biggest thing that I love to do is like on a Com scope rack or tray or um Beldon trays, fiber enclosures, you can actually take the right tray out of the actual housing and put it down to your table and splice everything and then put it all back away and make it look all nice and neat. With OPGW, you don't have that, you don't have that luxury. It it is an ex an exact science. And I actually did the math. So we use AFL splice trays inside of our OpticGuards by AFL. And there's 11 foot of service loop inside of our trays per every strand because we don't know what we're gonna come back into. You know, a lot we've heard the conversations. Well, you only need one loop. Well, you know, in a normal coyote can, when you're in a traditional coyote enclosure and you've got multiple trays inside of an enclosure, that makes sense. You know, yeah, you got you've got your service loop on the bottom of the coyote and you come up one time around and it's enough to get out to your splicer. Right. Makes complete sense. For OPGW, you don't have that luxury because if you need more fiber and you've got to redo it, you've got to go another 15 foot back. Because for every loop on an optic guard coil bracket is 15 foot of fiber. Well, to make it look right, to go in the bottom, you got to take another 15 foot off and you're prepping another 15 foot. Well, if you don't have a lot more length on your coil bracket, you you're you're you're just gonna be out of luck because you can't pull to pull OPGW is extraordinarily expensive. So that's the biggest thing to me is how precise it is, and it's all in the prep work.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

You know, because when when I ran fire, I always I live by the rule, it's better to be 15 feet too long than 15 inches too short. And you could always do an extra coil on the cable tray just outside of the telecom room. Nobody would ever see it, but you got that little bit extra slant there. But you know, again, with what you're doing is pretty precise. So where are you doing most of your work at? Are you doing it on the ground at an enclosure, or are you actually going up in bucket trucks and working up near the power lines? Where are you doing most of your work at?

Bucket Trucks Plus Full Test Stack

SPEAKER_02 17:25

We do some bucket truck work. So if we're out and about, and this is standard uh procedure across the industry, you know, if you out on a transmission line, it's stored about 20 feet in the air. So it keeps it out. You know, people can't just wrack up and grab it, keeps it away from animals. Now, inside like a substation, it's only five feet off the ground because it's an enclosed, it's a substation, it's secure. So we can walk up and work on it. But to to put the enclosure, to hang up the enclosure, we're in a bucket truck. But all our other prep work is done down on the ground. We'll bring enough coal slack to come down to the ground, prep it all, get it into the splice lab, do all our splicing, and before we hang it, we'll test it. We'll put it, we'll we'll build out the tray, we'll put it inside the optic guard, put the trays in so everything's as it would be stored, and then we shoot it all. We OLTS it um and OTDR it and then uh IOLM module uh test it also. That way we know everything about it. We there's no question because we don't want to come back to it later. Because that coordination to come back to it is even more coordination. Because then we have to line up a bucket truck, uh, two technicians, a splice lab. And sometimes we don't have that luxury to have all that available at one time. So we'd like to do one and done. All right, we're good, we're testing it. Okay, move on to the next spot.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Yeah, and for the for the technicians out there who don't think about this stuff, you know, I didn't I didn't think about it until I became an estimator, but you said when you roll a bucket truck, well, the I guarantee you, Florida Power and Light, I guarantee you they have a dollar, and a dollar, a dollar rate for every hour that bucket truck's being used. An hour rate for every technician out there. Yes. They even have an hourly rate for the splice lab. So when you say, hey, we need a bucket truck and a splice lab for eight hours, they can calculate immediately how much money that's gonna cost them. And that's why, you know, it makes that coordination even

OTDR Skills For Finding Breaks

SPEAKER_01 19:15

so much more. You know, you are the the the three a three-time winner of the Bixie Cable Skills Challenge. Let's be let's be proud now. Okay. What skills have you learned from that challenge that helps you with doing OPGW work?

SPEAKER_02 19:30

My my OTDR skills and OLTS, you know, everybody thinks you know, doing OLTS thing, OLTS testing is simple, but it's not. And being able to do OTDR shots and understand what you're looking at in real time is challenging. And knowing, okay, exactly where's the problem, you know, and finding the problem on a fiber link like that is the biggest hurdle to figure out, especially if we have a fiber cut. Because if we have a fiber cut, we don't know exactly where the fiber's cut, we just know from this city to this city we we don't have connection yet. Well, okay, well, we've got to go to a substation on that line and say, shoot the fiber. And we know what the distance would be from one sub to another. So on that line, we know what that distance should be. Well, okay, well, we got to shoot it and understand where the break is and know and try to find it. And that's one thing I've learned and a skill that I didn't think would be income advantage is to be able to navigate Google Maps. And you go to a sub and you say, okay, let's start figuring out where this break would be. And you start measuring and you start going, you start following Google Maps. All of a sudden, it'll get you within a couple spans of where the issue is and where we're having the issues at. And being able to read and interpret an OTDR and not just use the quick scale and it like the I call it the cheat sheet. It tells you a connector, a splice, you know, mechanical splice. Being able to read an actual graph, a a true OT old school OTDR trace and know what you're looking at. Is that a splice? Is that a ghost? Is that a made of pair? Because now it's to the point that you know we do a trace, and we say, Oh, that's that substation, oh, that's that panel. Yep, there's your other panel, there's your other panel. Because you'll have traces through multiple panels across miles of fiber, and you'll be able to look at it and say, okay, yep, that should be on that panel, and there's the next panel, and then there's that panel.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Yeah, I saw you demonstrate those superior OTDR skills at Bixie this year when uh you were helping uh Tom from um um helping with the setup their fiber lab for the testing. Uh what the heck's the name? Softing. Tom from Softing. And uh you, me and Tom and Nolan were kind of sitting there and you were spooling some fiber either onto a spool or off of a spool. I can't remember which way you were doing it. And you were sitting there doing it for a while. You had to hook up to a little drill and you were spinning and spinning and spinning it. And I I think Nolan asked, Well, how much, how much, how much fiber you think we have on there? And I'm thinking, I'm thinking, how am I gonna figure this out? Because you know, I don't deal with that stuff on a daily basis. And you say, Oh, hold on, you just put a little micro band in and you hit it with your boom. Oh, it's X amount of fee. It's like, I didn't even, you know, to you it's second nature. To me, I probably would have thought of that, but it'll probably take me a good 30 minutes before that thought came to my brain. Because I don't deal with that kind of stuff. So that's you know, that's kind of the kind of stuff that I think the skills challenge helped you. Do you think the uh you know, because you know, Bixie a lot of their skills challenges are timed. Do you think that time pressure has helped you do OPGW?

Time Pressure Tools And Fiber Tones

SPEAKER_02 22:35

Yes, because it made me very aware of how long tasks take. And if you do them in the correct sequence, it optimizes your time. You know, and you and you work. We don't like we we always work safe. Safety is top priority, you know, in our everyday work, but also working smart, not lazy, working smart to where all your tools are readily available, you're not searching for tools, you're not tripping on tools. One thing that we did do is we went to um cordless tools, all battery operated, battery-operated heat gun, battery-operated grinder, because the cords were a hazard. You wouldn't think about it. It's just a cord on the ground. Well, when you're working outdoors on a transmission line, there's no flat ground. It just doesn't, it doesn't exist. Even in a substation, there's no flat ground. You're always it, there's always gonna be onulations and and you know, stuff to work around. So we went to cordless tools, and that was a game changer because we eliminated a safety risk. And one thing that I'd never heard before, because it's not a thing, an inside plant, is to tone out a fiber.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

The technician that I work with, he's been in the industry for 20 years doing outside plant fiber. We were shooting some fiber. He said, Hey, send me a tone. And I said, uh, hmm. I I I've toned out miles of copper, you know, cat six, trying to find jacks, you know. I had to do some of that this afternoon. I'm like, you want me to do a what? He said, Yeah, send me a tone. I said, dude, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not even gonna lie, because this is not something that I was ever covered. Sending a 2K tone over a fiber with so you can use a fiber identifier tool. So when you put it on that fiber, all of a sudden it'll say 2K. And that's how you identify the fiber that you're on. If it's a if it's dark fiber, it's a 2K tone. But it's not widely discussed on inside plant because why would you need that on inside plant? Because you need a fiber identifier tool that actually puts the little macro bend in it and it tells you if you have traffic going one way or the other. But if you're not used to using outside plant, you never, I've never heard the term send me, you know, send me a 2K tone on that fiber because that's more outside plant. So um Bixy Skills Challenge is going to be interesting

Teaser And Final Takeaway

SPEAKER_02 24:59

this year. It's it it really does, it makes you it makes you a better technician.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

So join us next week when we talk about how you can get into doing OPGW work, what kind of traits you need to have, what kind of skills you need to have. Till next time. Knowledge is power.