ECN Forum Forums Technical Discussion Electrical Theory and Applications crazy 3 phasy

would'nt that be kind of high impedance thru the earth??

Sparky, Not only is it high impedance, you don't know where it ends up. It was just such a scenario that made me wander out to the pole, fella kept getting really clobbered out at his well. He had a tin cup out there and used it to drink from, and this was through linemans boots. Black Valley PA. The cure of course, was to replace the galvanized pipe with plastic, at least that stopped him from getting hit, didn't ground the thing properly. It works if the load is not heavy, and his was not.

In the early days of the REA (rural electrification authority) it was common to run only the single hot out in rural area where there was often miles between customers. The earth was used as the second conductor for these systems. I don't know if there are any of these circuits still in use. I haven't found any in this area.
Don(resqcapt19)

>The earth was used as the second conductor for these systems.
Obviously they would have tied the GC of the low side to the GC of the high side. But what was the high side voltage? It is hard to imagine this working very well at 4000 V. I would guess that the voltage would vary with the rainfall.

well i'm certainly eyeballin' the utility poles around here now....

>I can only see 1 wire going into the top of the can.
There is another wire somewhere.

How many wires were going pole-to-pole?

3 wires running along pole to pole. Only 1 ever is feeding the xfmr. I found a few clear examples where the main run is on one side of the street, and a single wire crosses over the street to the top of a transformer on the other side.
Is everyone saying that in their area, this is not the case?
I will have to try to take some pictures!

geez, i'm lookin' up while driving here

... while surfing my laptop, while on my cell phone, eating a breakfast sandwich. I have become so obsessed with looking at every poletop, that I will soon have an accident.
BTW, what did you find?

would any one like to chat about electricity, transformers, motors,
nec requirements, successful electrical contracting traits,habbits,marketing etc....
I am a 15 year electrician and would like to learn more..I take my California State contracting exam on 9/13/01......... my icq and email should be visable to users....