Metal electric poles?

Geo-TH,In

Well-known Member
Recently I've seen a contractor crew, not duke energy crew, replacing some 40 ft tall wood electric poles with metal one. The poles appear to carry 3 phase power, three wires on top and a neutral/ground wire a few feet below. Very high off ground. It appears they may be replacing bad ones with metal, but not sure. Reason I say this is they replaced one pole, skipped 2 wooden poles and then put in another metal.
This is the first time I've seen metal poles used in my area.

Is metal the new pole of the future?
 
Ten years ago our local power company installed a new transmission line between substations. They used laminated wood poles on the straight sections and metal towers at the corners.
 
Yes! When I was in Poland they were using concrete electric poles. I saw several that had been broken and 'patched'. One was patched with 2x4s. Right many had wood poles propping them up. One was broken off and propped up on cement blocks. The wires kept it upright. That was 15 years ago.

Of course their idea of power is a round plug with 2 round pins. And 220 volts on the pins. AND only 2 wires to the plug! And in the building I was working in, they ran the 2 wires IN the plaster in one room. They nailed them to the brick and slapped the plaster over them. I hope nobody decides to hang a picture on that wall.
 
Florida has been using concrete poles for as long as I can remember. Termites don't like the taste of concrete. Bet concrete and metals are hard for a repair man to climb with spikes on boots. No chance of getting a sliver where it would hurt the most.
 
I suspect it's getting hard to find decent timber tall enough for the higher voltage lines. The 40 foot part is just what you can see; there must be eight feet or more in the ground. Not to mention that a steel pole should be good for 100 years or more.
 
Personally I would worry about the steel pole becoming live. What I've read is the steel poles are lighter and can be installed with less equipment. Also the poles can be pre-drilled making installation quicker.
 
> Personally I would worry about the steel pole becoming live.

Hmm. I wonder what happens when you short a 15 kV line to a wooden pole? At least a steel pole makes a good conductor to ground; I have to think it won't stay energized for long before something blows.
 
Our local co-op has been installing 60 foot tall tapered octagonal steel poles for nearly 20 years now. They look like they're rusted, but it's actually a special coating that makes them look like they're covered with Brown rust. When I was up-town today, I parked near where one of the co-op crews was installing a new "directional" line on a 40 foot tall wooden pole. I asked one of the crewmen about the (4) - 1 inch diameter lines on the top cross bar - he said the top 4 were 3 Phase and everything below them was Single Phase.


Doc :>)
 
The local power companies are replacing many of the local skeleton towers with monopoles and hanging on a new set of conductors at the same time. I have a line coming thru my place and can't wait for them to do this lead. The monopoles are a whole lot easier to work around.....
 
most concrete poles in the US are prestressed concrete which will last a lot longer than reinforced concrete---used extensively for bridge supports over water
 
Stephen, the steel poles that my co-op installs are fastened with (16) - 2 inch diameter bolts, 8 feet long and set in solid concrete. These steel poles are designed to take a direct hit from a Lightning Bolt and survive.


:>)
 

The ones that we have here in New England and in Quebec are what I would call towers. They usually have two legs and an arm out to each side for the conductors. The conductors are probably fifty feet apart.
 
See quite a few of them in southern MN along I90. Do you suppose instead of gaffs they use magnets to climb them? Lol
 
A wooden pole has a ground wire which goes all the way to the bottom of a pole in the ground. I just wondered if they were going to install a ground rod for every pole. In the event a storm pulled a wire loose and made contact with the pole if it wasn't grounded would fry someone if they happened to touch it. With a wooden pole if a wire was pulled loose and was laying on the wood it probably wouldn't hurt anything.
 
Helicopters?

A good friend of mine is President of a company that designs, markets, and installs laminated wood poles. They use 'copters to set the taller, more complex ones.
 
There are a couple of things they could be using. Aluminum is only so strong. Street lites and such is light duty. Power lines, ahhhhh maybe. This stuff canges all of the time. Steel with zinc, galvinized, what ever. Now the rusty ones are made that way. Can remember when I was a kid, mid 60s, US Steel came out with something for hi way barriers that needed no maintaining. They rusted and then stopped. Kind of a nice milk chocolate brown. Metal is A606-4 or the civilian name is Corten.
 
I would assume they ground the steel pole in a similar manner. Would not need the copper wire to the top but have the bottom tied to a ground conductor.
 
Helicopters. Driving truck through Minnesota by all those steel poles I've seen them using helicopters to get right up to them. The guy doing the work would have to really trust the pilot I would think.
 
I've watched them string wires with a helicopter, never saw them set poles though. You'd have to be a heck of a pilot to do that job.
 
(quoted from post at 19:51:18 01/17/17) > Personally I would worry about the steel pole becoming live.

Hmm. I wonder what happens when you short a 15 kV line to a wooden pole? At least a steel pole makes a good conductor to ground; I have to think it won't stay energized for long before something blows.

At 15KV, a wooden pole conducts electricity about as well as a steel one.

The power company puts on safety demonstrations at local fairs and farm shows, where they show just exactly what those power lines can do. Think you can shove that live downed power line out of the way with a 2x4? Think again. They touched a 2x4 to a live line and BAM! Can't remember if the 2x4 was vaporized or not but it definitely conducted power.
 
Metal is cheaper than wood, BUT, if ice brings down a line, the metal ones fold whereas the wood ones bend. This happened in Iowa along State Highway 141 between Granger and Moran. That road was the demarcation point between wood to metal. The wood poles were bending but the metal pole bent in half and it was months before more poles could be made as replacements.
 
The windtower power line by my place are metal poles. Sure was funny seeing a squirrel run and jump up to it and hear boom with a sliding noise, kind of like the old cartoons were lol.
 
They are running a huge new power line across N MN, 500 kv dc. It's going a full 1/2 mile across our property, supposed to start clearing ROW this month. The towers will be metal,pretty sure AL, as they will be set with a helicopter. Hopefully I can get some photos to post on here.
 
In Morocco they use steel high line poles with a concrete base......How do I know? A car I was a passenger in hit one near Casablanca in 1958. (I was in the U. S. Air Force over there crewing a B-47). I was there 120 days in the base hospital at Nouasseur AB before they flew me to Chanute AFB to finish my recovery.....the accident nearly killed me.
 
We replaced our emergency power line to the plant, originally a construction line, 69kV three phase. The original wooden poles must have gone up late 1960s, replaced with galvanized steel, for reliability reasons. Many of the neighbors with ROW had complaints about the appearance.

One of our training instructors was originally a lineman, said the reward for working 19.9kV line live was getting to sign your name to the cross-beam atop the pole. Draw an arc from the wire wrapped at the insulator and burn your sig into the wood.
 

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