Iowa wooden cable reels: wind, data centers and co-op lines

Wind farms and their reels

Iowa generates more than half of its electricity from wind, a higher share than any other state according to EIA. Every wind farm has a collection system: medium-voltage cable buried between turbines and run to a substation. A single project can bury many miles of it, and the cable arrives on large wooden reels.

When construction ends, those reels are often left in the project's laydown yard. They tend to be big, frequently 72 inches and up, built heavy and only used once. They are good reels for the right buyer, but they need serious lifting equipment and a flatbed, and they take a lot of trailer space. Sonoco's packing guide puts only 9 reels with 84 inch flanges in a 53-foot van.

MidAmerican, Alliant and the public systems

EIA's 2024 list of Iowa's top five retailers is MidAmerican Energy, Interstate Power and Light (Alliant Energy), the Board of Water, Electric and Communications in Muscatine, North West Rural Electric Cooperative and Cedar Falls Utilities. MidAmerican serves Des Moines, the Quad Cities, Council Bluffs, Sioux City and much of the west. Interstate Power and Light serves Cedar Rapids and much of the east and north. Muscatine and Cedar Falls run their own city systems, and North West REC serves the northwest corner.

Both big utilities have built a lot of wind, and both serve large new loads. That means transmission, substations and feeders, and a steady supply of empties at service centers and contractors' yards.

Data center campuses

Several of the largest technology companies run data center campuses in Iowa, including sites around Council Bluffs, Altoona and West Des Moines. Each needs high-voltage service and on-site substations, medium-voltage distribution across the campus, and large quantities of building wire and fiber in the buildings.

Contractors on those jobs empty reels by the hundreds and often need reels to cut cable to length. A data center job in Altoona and a feeder rebuild in Ankeny may be twenty minutes apart. Putting their reels together is the kind of short trade we look for.

Freight on the I-80 and I-35 cross

I-80 crosses Iowa from Council Bluffs through Des Moines and Iowa City to Davenport, and I-35 runs north from Missouri through Des Moines and Ames to Minnesota. They meet at Des Moines, which puts the center of the state within a few hours of almost everywhere in it. I-29 follows the Missouri River on the west side through Sioux City and Council Bluffs, I-380 links Iowa City with Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, and I-74 runs from the Quad Cities into Illinois.

Cross-border pairing is easy here. Council Bluffs lots are Omaha lots; Davenport and Bettendorf lots are Quad Cities lots with Illinois buyers across the river; Sioux City lots reach into Nebraska and South Dakota; and northern lots pair with southern Minnesota.

• Central: Des Moines, Ames, Ankeny, Altoona, West Des Moines
• East: Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Waterloo, Dubuque
• Quad Cities: Davenport, Bettendorf, Muscatine
• West: Council Bluffs, Sioux City
• North: Mason City, Fort Dodge, Spencer

BEAD in Iowa

NTIA's June 2023 BEAD allocation for Iowa was $415,331,313.00, one of the smaller shares in the Midwest. Iowa's many telephone co-ops and small local carriers had already built a lot of rural fiber before BEAD, so the remaining unserved homes are scattered. Fiber to them is mostly plowed along section roads.

A build of that kind empties reels in small numbers at many sites. Crews want empties for remnants, and a co-op yard may hold a mix of old copper telephone cable reels and newer fiber reels. Both have buyers.

Reels for an Iowa buyer

Iowa buyers run from wind and solar contractors who need a few large reels for repairs and cable replacement, to electricians in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids who want small reels for building wire, to farms that want a stout reel for fence wire or hose. Fiber crews working the scattered rural build want empties in modest numbers, with drums sized to their cable.

Because Iowa has no wire plant of its own on the makers' lists, a used reel already in the state saves a long haul from Indiana, Kentucky or further. We look in Iowa first, then in Omaha, the Quad Cities and southern Minnesota. Send the cable and footage, or the reel size if you know it, and the town. If the size you need isn't close, we'll tell you what the nearest size holds using the NEMA capacity formula, so you can decide.

Ground, harvest and winter

Iowa's black soil is excellent for corn and poor for a loaded semi after rain. A wind farm laydown yard on a gravel pad is fine; a reel stack in a field edge in April may be unreachable. Harvest season fills rural roads with grain trucks and combines in the fall. Winter brings blowing snow across open country and spring weight limits on some county roads.

None of that stops a trade. It just means we ask where exactly the reels are and plan the pickup for when a truck can get in and out.

1. 01

   Locate the reels

   Town and the road to the site, and whether it's a gravel pad, a paved yard or a field.

2. 02

   Size and count

   Flange x traverse x drum and a count for each size, from the reel stencil.

3. 03

   Lifting

   For reels over 72 inches, what equipment can lift them, and whether lagging or bands are still on.

4. 04

   Photos

   The pile, a stencil per size and any damage.