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Utility poles

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Re: Utility poles

#131

Post by will_hughes »

philg_jr wrote: post #36
Waterluvian wrote: post #2

I absolutely love reading about a topic from a super enthusiastic non-expert. I want to subscribe to a weekly series called "Reasonably Intelligent Person Obsesses Over Something"

Something that completely fascinates me are cell towers/equipment. They are everywhere, yet I know almost nothing about them and rarely get to see them up close. Even less often (pretty much never) meet anyone who work on the equipment. I imagine each base station is basically a mini datacenter. I was at Mammoth Mountain recently for the first time and got to see the cell towers at the top of one of the lifts up clos…

The one thing I miss about working for a major national telco was access to the internal newsgroups where you'd get deep discussions triggered by someone's random question on things.

Re: Utility poles

#133

Post by js2 »

adonovan wrote: post #47

Those cans are filled with transformer oil, which until relatively recently consisted mostly of polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. Imagine how many of those cans exist across the United States and you get a sense of how big the PCB industry used to be, and why rivers such as the Hudson in New York [1] and the Housatonic in Massachusetts [2] are polluted with olympic swimming-pool sized quantities of the durable oily…

There's a nice recreational lake here in Raleigh, NC. People run on paths by it, sail on it, and used to fish out of it. Sadly, it’s also an EPA Superfund site because a company long since out of business, Ward Transformers, saw fit to dispose of PCB-laden transformer oil right into a ditch behind the plant. The PCBs ran off into the lake and streams for miles. All the nearby waterways warn not to eat the fish caught therein.

This company wasn’t just irresponsible, it was malicious. At one point, a contractor it hired to dispose of the oil was caught spraying it along rural roadsides.

http://sph.unc.edu/superfund-pages/srpresources/ward-transfo...

https://sph.unc.edu/files/2015/08/SRP_Soil-Still-Toxic-25-ye...

Related story – “How the Benzene Tree Polluted the World“:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/benzene-...

Re: Utility poles

#134

Post by ilkan »

Dangeranger wrote: post #15

Back around 2010 I worked for a company which built software to catalog residential distribution utility poles and the lines emanating from the poles to the houses. To elaborate on a few of the statements from the post Poles in my neighborhood tend to have consecutive numbers. I don't think this was carefully planned. The sequential ordering of pole numbers is definitely planned, and fits in with a scheme developed b…

My country is divided into a very very fine cartesian grid, and each pole is referred to by the grid number, which is also its database reference id for transformers and other hardware... a homegrown GIS. A consistent grid also makes it easy for linemen to find them!

Re: Utility poles

#135

Post by jvolkman »

Pole replacement is interesting and full of bureaucracy. At least here in Seattle, the power company doesn't have authority to move communications wires and equipment attached to poles that are being replaced. So often times they'll cut the bottom off the old pole, move it to the side, install a new pole, and then use seemingly whatever they've got lying around to lash the two of them together. Owners of the other equipment eventually get around to moving their stuff (sometimes years later), and the last one removes the pole.

Some examples: http://archive.seattleweekly.com/news/960949-129/whats-up-wi...

Re: Utility poles

#136

Post by Caveman_Coder »

Dangeranger wrote: post #32
jedberg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that there were perhaps 1000 poles out there that weren't on any of there maps I can totally see how this would happen. When I bought my house, the power/utility lines were hanging about four feet off the ground in my backyard. Apparently the previous owner didn't care. I called the utility company to complain, and they sent someone out with a new full size pole, who basically just shoved it in the ground in the co…

This is common at every utility. Part of the issue is based on the fact that the GIS systems do not align with the paper systems 100% and the paper systems are typically regarded as the standard. Another problem that must be considered is that utility workers, while highly competent at their profession, are not always great with working on computers. They generally write everything down on paper and then have one of…

> "Another problem that must be considered is that utility workers, while highly competent at their profession, are not always great with working on computers."

You're absolutely correct on this point. When I was working as a transmission system operator the older guys (all in the 50s and 60s) would complain all day and night about the new "computer apps" that were introduced in our day to day workflow. They all preferred the old "pen and paper" way of doing things...Like you said, I'd be the who would end up putting the written switching procedures into the application we used since the older guys basically refused to learn it...

Re: Utility poles

#137

Post by Caveman_Coder »

eptil wrote: post #109
Dangeranger wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is common at every utility. Part of the issue is based on the fact that the GIS systems do not align with the paper systems 100% and the paper systems are typically regarded as the standard. Another problem that must be considered is that utility workers, while highly competent at their profession, are not always great with working on computers. They generally write everything down on paper and then have one of…

This is only true at dysfunctional utilities. We dont even have paper maps and havent since the 90s. GIS is the standard for all our employees.

Do your system operators us GIS to sectionalize lines and troubleshoot transmission/distribution issues, or are you talking about the engineers/planners?

Re: Utility poles

#138

Post by ldiracdelta »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #91
ggm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stobie poles are used a lot in Italy and southern Europe. They all seem to be from the 1920s and have really bad "concrete cancer" and the underlying steel is rusting out. Quite picturesque in a "oh crap, there is 220v on top of this rusting pile..." kind of way. "the prime of miss jean brodie" is set in pre-WWII scotland and an opening credit scene walks past two concrete lamp posts. My mother (who was an architectu…

220V isn't very high in the power world. The US has 765 KV. I'm not sure what the highest voltage cable in the world is, but now I'm curious.

IIRC, my college power professor said that Russian transmission lines carried 1 million volts, whereas US transmission lines only carry half a million volts.

Re: Utility poles

#139

Post by m4x »

ars wrote: post #89
aidenn0 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the second half of your comment is correct: >> The electrical outlets in your home have two power-carrying prongs. >Only one of the prongs carries power. The other is attached to the earth, and is always at zero volts. Voltages are about potential differentials, so "zero volts" is relatively meaningless without context. The neutral line is required by the electric code to be connected to earth at the electric p…

> Both prongs absolutely carry power. Both carry current . But not power. Power is volts * amps, and the neutral is defined as zero volts (if you ignore the voltage drop). > you can get shocked when working on junction boxes for the neutral line Only from the voltage drop on that wire. It's not the full 120v. (Unless it's cut of course, but that's a whole different story.) > Here you use voltages as a relative measur…

If you are going to take the view that the neutral does not carry power, then the phase wire does not either. Ignoring volt drop, both wires have a 0V difference between each end and so no power is dissipated in them. Power is only dissipated in the appliance (except in reality, where volt drop is responsible for significant losses between generator and consumer)

Re: Utility poles

#140

Post by Pyxl101 »

Animats wrote: post #95
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC these designs don't naturally have torque at zero speed like three-phase induction motors do.

Yes. One of Tesla's more useful inventions was figuring out an simple way to get a synchronous motor started. Pre-Tesla schemes involved auxiliary starting motors and clutches. Tesla figured out how to run a synchronous motor in induction motor mode during starting.

To clarify, do you mean Tesla the person or Tesla the car company? I figure the answer should probably be obvious to me, but I'm not an electronics person and it's not.
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