Not every cabling job requires expensive heavy duty steel ladders and rigid wire basket trays. With that thought in mind, in 1996 Snake Tray founder Roger Jette conceived the world’s first hand-bendable cable tray with integrated mounting rings.
America’s insatiable appetite for electricity – turbocharged by the massive power requirements of hyperscale AI data centers – is driving utilities and commercial energy producers to increase grid capacity and build new power plants.
Cable conveyance is one of most overlooked yet mission-critical aspects of utility-scale energy plant design. Whether power is generated from fossil fuel or renewable sources, pumped directly to the grid or temporarily stored in a battery array, poor cable management can result in reduced energy harvest, safety hazards, spiraling maintenance costs, material waste, shortened asset lifespans and operational delays.
Older, highly experienced cable installers and licensed electricians are retiring from the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Electrical industry at a rapid pace. Combined with the boom in hyperscale data center construction and a lack of apprentice-class talent entering the labor pool, many electrical contracting firms have found themselves at the center of a perfect storm: Too much work and not enough skilled workers.
From Texas to New Zealand, flocks of sheep leisurely graze on natural green grasses growing beneath hundreds of rows of solar panels. A
In the Midwest US, researchers have discovered that solar farms can coexist with crops that thrive in partial shade. B
Across the south of France, vineyards are growing grapes for winemaking under the shade and protection of solar panels. C
Spain, famous for its olive oil, integrates solar fields with hedgerow olive tree groves for clean energy generation without disrupting crop production. D
Snake Tray, inventor of the revolutionary cable management system for high ampacity DC cables at utility-grade solar plants, is excited to introduce a new addition to its growing catalog of above ground cable conveyance solutions: the Solar Snake Max – Single Messenger Wire.
Some utilities are producing so much renewable solar energy that supply is outpacing demand. They need to store that surplus electricity to power the grid with clean energy after sunset and to complement fossil fuel-based energy production during peak consumption periods or unplanned outages. To make that happen utilities are building battery energy storage systems (BESS) adjacent to the solar panel arrays and inverters that transform megawatts of DC current into usable AC power.
When solar modules reach end-of-life there is a lot more to replacing them than just swapping out the panels. Like everything else in this world that is technology-related, things are getting smaller and more energy efficient while becoming much more powerful.
In the 28 years since Snake Tray was founded the company has grown into the industry leader in cable management. All Snake Tray products are designed around the principle of helping our customers lower their costs with innovative solutions that save on labor, take less time to install, and generally use less materials and hardware.
Snake Tray invented the Solar Snake Max. The world’s first above ground free-air cable conveyance system designed to help utility-grade solar installations overcome the challenges of burying cables. In addition to eliminating the time, expense, and messy process of digging and filling trenches with miles of DC cables, free-air cable conveyance maximizes energy harvest by preventing the heat buildup that occurs when high ampacity cables are bundled or buried.
