ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Streetlighting

Just came back from streetlight patrol and I had to scope a problem where lights had failed, but on a important intersection.

After opening at least 10 pole and pillars the last one, overlooked in the beginning, was the culprit where a linetap had filled up with water from the dew in the s.l. pole and tracking caused leakage in the almalgamating tape then bang!!! short out to earth and loss of supply.
Fixed problem and re instated supply for the night. I put the s.l.'s on 24 hours supply from the transformer, because i did'n feel to interested to open probably an other 10 or so pillars and get eaten by the mossies at the same time.
Of couse no schematics in a new subdivision and NZ s.l. wiring is far from logical.
The load here was only 7 Amps @ 230 Volts.

BTW
Some circuits we have problems with run at 35 Amps through 10 mm² cable for about ½ kM.
You can see that the volts drop will cause low voltage at lamps or burn out from poor connections.

Just came back from streetlight patrol and I had to scope a problem where lights had failed, but on a important intersection.

After opening at least 10 pole and pillars the last one, overlooked in the beginning, was the culprit where a linetap had filled up with water from the dew in the s.l. pole and tracking caused leakage in the almalgamating tape then bang!!! short out to earth and loss of supply.
Fixed problem and re instated supply for the night. I put the s.l.'s on 24 hours supply from the transformer, because i did'n feel to interested to open probably an other 10 or so pillars and get eaten by the mossies at the same time.
Of couse no schematics in a new subdivision and NZ s.l. wiring is far from logical.
The load here was only 7 Amps @ 230 Volts.

BTW
Some circuits we have problems with run at 35 Amps through 10 mm² cable for about ½ kM.
You can see that the volts drop will cause low voltage at lamps or burn out from poor connections.