A few years ago the power company did some work on a pole outside my house and installed some metal objects on the pole. Each looks like two angle irons, each about 2 feet long, joined by a pivot, with the two loose ends screwed to the crossbar of the pole. They look like they should be some kind of structural support, but as you can see from the picture, they’re not supporting anything. They’re just screwed to the crossbar and sticking up in the air. In the picture the top crossbar has one on the left and the bottom crossbar has one on the right. Anyone know what these are for?
Odd. Now I’m curious. Do the near polls have the same thing? Interesting that this was done a few years ago. Perhaps they where installed to help with some sort of upgrade, and the upgrade never happened?
Same question - do the nearby poles have something similar? The only thing I can think of is that it’s a mounting to install a shield wire - a grounded wire that runs above the hot wires as basically a full-length lightning rod, but… A) I have no idea why they would never come back to install the wire itself, and B) I’ve never heard of shield wires being installed on a relatively low voltage distribution line like this. At my utility, at least, we don’t bother until at least 50kV, and even that’s not universal.
I’ll have to take a closer look at other poles the next time I’m out for a walk, but none of the poles I can see from my house have these things except the pole in the photo. Certainly the two poles adjoining this one do not have them.
Maybe a triangle to reduce the chance of birds roosting there shorting across the wires.
Maybe only those locations needed it. or could benefit from it.
A California Condor with a 9 foot wing-span can cause a major power outage; so these devices are pretty important. In the past, I’ve seen beams placed above the wires so as to avoid the wings touching the hot wires, but my understanding is that they now raise the Condors with utility pole mockups inside of the cages. When the birds decide to hop on one, they get a mild electrical shock. Hopefully, they avoid the power lines when they’re released out into the wild.