In a few of our older, rural networks here an Overhead Earth wire is necessary.
The ground way out up towards the mountains, consists of rocks, stones and very little actual soil, trying to get a decent earth contact is pretty much impossible, even with a buried Grid system you still don't have a low enough resistance to trip the protection in a reasonable time frame to ensure personal protection.
Most of these systems have been replaced with a Buried system that goes very deep down into the ground and uses huge bare copper/steel rods, the last one we drove was 14m long. [Linked Image]
Oddly enough Ryan, are those spikes below the Secondary fuses, some sort of an anti-climbing protection?.
{Message edited to add last question. [Linked Image]}

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 10-31-2003).]