NIBE Element - Blue Wire

 BLUE WIRE is an application developed heating cable solution, powered by the overhead wire system itself.  A solution to increase the traffic regularity and reduce cost for expensive ice‐remover‐vehicle and teams. The system works with all overhead wire systems from 600 to 1.500 V (special system for 15kV and 25kV).

Eliminate costly interruptions of revenue service due to the effect of ice/frost accumulation on the contact wire.

Ice on the contact wire causes tramlines and light rails to lose power and in extreme cases leads to the contact wire / catenary system being brought down.

Arcing caused by the presence of ice leads to excessive wear to the pantograph conductors, all leading to traffic delays and service disruption.

Mechanical removal of ice is manpower and time consuming and mechanically stresses the contact wire.

The heating system is a multi-layer design. Basically it consists of an electrical insulated constant wattage heater surrounded by a heat transfer material.

The heating cable is secured to the contact wire with phosphor-bronze attachment clips to avoid galvanic corrosion. The heating cable is in a triangular shape. This makes it very easy to mount on top of the contact wire and the shape provides excellent thermal contact to the contact wire. Finally it also makes the fastening clips easy to handle and very efficient to mount.

Blue Wire Overhead Wire De-Icing Pdf, 361.9 kB.

Blue Wire Contact Wire Heating Controller Pdf, 2.1 MB.