ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Over voltage level at night for Street lights

The only place the PoCo here will install a light is on one of their poles. That is usually in the ROW. They will provide a somewhat decorative pole and have a few heads you can choose from but they are pretty slow to do any maintenance beyond changing bulbs and ballasts. If the pole is damaged, the HOA buys it. They even fight about normal wear and tear.

Marc:

Merci for the dual arc tube bulb confirmation.

Greg,

In the town that I inspect in, the HOA does own their own street lights. When one of their poles got hit, they had to get a permit and I had to do the inspection. I thought all the HOA used the POCO lights, till this happened about 2 years ago.

Is that in a utility ROW or is it in a privately owned patch? That seems to be the deciding factor here. Now once the poles are installed, the HOA does become responsible for the cost of replacing them when they are damaged. If these are on an existing utility pole that is not really relevant but usually they have buried utilities here so the light poles are only for the light.
My wife has found it is easier to simply pay the PoCo for this but I suppose they could hire their own electrician.


As for the voltage itself, I would bet the voltage at the end of the line would be somewhat low at night because of voltage drop and during the day when the lights were off in the day time it would be high all the way down the line.

If they are simply tying into the closest convenient 120/240 transformer as they go down the road this effect will be less.

Greg,

I will find out from the town engineer later today when I see him. As for where they tie into, the will take like 5-10 pole and hit the nearest condo/townhouse, then take the next 5-10 and hit a different condo that is closest to the next 10 etc., etc.. The issue I had last year was that one of their poles got hit and knocked down and the open wires were laying on the ground. They finally got them boxed off. That was when we found out that the UF wire feeding these pole were only buried about 6" under the sod. You could actually see the wire in several spots.

Is that a contractor doing the work or the actual PoCo?

I have seen some "contractors" doing pretty shoddy work. I don't think they are actually licensed ECs, just a couple foreigners with a baby Kaboda backhoe. I watched them running service laterals threading sticks of 2" RNC over the triplex and dropping it in the hole.

Greg,


The ROW is there but the HOA owns it. The POCO has no ROA in that complex. As for the street lights, a lic. EC was doing the work. They cut the roadway open, laid pipe in the trench and back filled and put macadam over it.

Sounds like something was done out of sequence at that complex if they had to cut the road for the u/g wiring.

Usually out here the poly pipe for the wires is trenched in first and the road is paved over it.

The worst U/G wiring I ever saw was a Contractor who saved time and money in his subdivision by laying the UF cable on top of the bare ground and then laying the sod on top of it.
Some people are just totally clueless!!

In lower Vancouver Island the street lights are owned and maintained by the municipalities they are installed. I cannot say for sure but outside of municipalities I think the lights are owned by the province where on a provincial highway.
So the POCO does have a voltage sag during peak and a rise above nominal at the lowest demand for which they do make some adjustment.
The tolerance is dictated by the Utilities commission which regulate their work and the delivery of their services.
With the advent of electronic ballasts and power supplies it is more and more common to see devices that can tolerate voltages from 85 to 240 volts without any different connections. Some ballasts even accommodate 120 to 347 volts + - %10.

If I were a utility or a municipality I am not sure I would also want another device in my luminaries to deal with what is a pretty closely regulated voltage level. Or in other words the local utility is pretty close in peak and off peak voltage regulation. The generally react to the exceptions quickly.