As I mentioned in this thread, it's unusual to find HV and LV running on the same poles in the U.K., other than where they meet at a pole-top transformer.

Here is one such rare occurrence though, a few miles from me. This is a single-phase HV spur line (two legs of 11kV delta) crossing the road on the top of the poles, with 3-wire 240/480V below:



There's a 240V feeder running down the pole from the xfmr and underground to somewhere, quite probably the old church you can see in the first photo:



This is the first pole on the opposite side of the road from the transformer. Note the extra earth connection to the LV neutral:



And this is as far as the shared spans run. Two 240V service drops off to the left go to a couple of houses behind the trees, and the 240/480 continues a short way off to the right to a farm and house:



(Sorry about the contrast on this last pic; I was shooting almost into the sun.)

So there you have it: HV and LV sharing a grand total of three spans!

This is certainly odd to us here in the States as almost all poles have combined systems.

A typical pole in my neighborhood will have the following.

13.8KV at the top (one area I know of actually uses 39 KV at the top of the poles)

120/240 or 208Y/120 volt

Phone copper conductors

Phone Fiber conductors

Municipal Fire Alarm system (Essentially a two wire telegraph system)

Cable TV conductors

If it is a 'Local' power company you may also find other town wiring...in my Town the local power company adds PA speakers to the poles surrounding a fair ground.

This is a thread jack question, but I have always wondered in the case of a municipal/regional/co-op utility, does the telephone company still own the poles as they usually do?

Here in NA and I think other local Dept's you will find a mix of Tel Co and Municipal owned poles. I have no idea how that evolved.

I know when the local power company installed new taller poles so they could add more high voltage circuits above it literally took years for the Telephone company to come out and shift their cables over to the new poles.

I think it's because the telegraph system predated the electrical system, so the telco's monopolized ownership of the poles. Though I'm sure if I'm wrong about that, someone here will hopefully chime in.



Yeah, they don't seem to jump on that, do they? Down the street from me they replaced a pole that was snapped in a car accident. They left a fragment of the old pole (leaving only the telco lines on it) attached to the new one with their heavy bailing wire. They still haven't moved the telephone lines over to the new pole and removed the old pole fragment. That happened 2 years ago!!

Lovely photo's of rural England. Interesting to see the additional earth, to support the MEN system on the 3 rd photo.

It is common in NZ to find multiple voltages, phone and scada hanging off the same pole.

Most poles are POCO owned in NZ but we have still Phone Co poles with a power top on it which is usually 230/400 Volts.

11kV feeder on top the 240/415V consumer mains is normal in this part of the world. In fact I have an 11kV aerial feeder right outside my house, with the 240V house main supply only a few feet below it.
Needless to say, there are insurance claims when the 11kV gets mixed up with the low voltage mains as a result of a car crashing into a pole, or a carbonised possum dangling between the two supplies.
Above ground telephone cables are only seen in a few less densley populated suburbs and then mainly in outlying or rural areas. They share the power poles where available, otherwise Telstra provides the poles.
When cable TV came to Australia in 1995, one of the operators decided to use aerial cables, as is done in the US, and so had to pay for use of the poles which were claimed to be the property of the electricity supplier.
As to what is done when a power pole is replaced, I've seen two things; one is that the pay TV cable is left hanging until the cable operator reattaches it, the other is the old power pole is left in situ, but cut down to just above TV cable.
The other cable operator, pulled their cables through the existing underground phone ducting, often damaging the phone cables.
There was alot of whingeing about the aesthetics of the TV cables to the point where some councils banned them, thus preventing Optus having any pay TV customers in certain areas.
12 years down the track of course everyone has forgotten about the pay TV cables but now have ideas of increasing electricity charges to pay for putting the supply underground.

It's common enough to find telephone running below 240/415V in rural areas here, just very rare to have anything else on the same poles with HV. I think "townies" probably find even shared LV power/telephone odd sometimes as they're not used to seeing it as much.

One of the things which is very noticeable about Britain compared to the U.S. is that as soon as you reach any sort of town the power distribution is far more likely to be all underground here. This is even the case in relatively small towns.

Stalham, about 5 miles from here, is a good example. This is a small town of about 3500 people. The 33kV feeder to this whole area comes in overhead across the fields to the main area sub-station at one edge of town, and there are 11kV overheads from there which distribute out around the surrounding countryside. But within Stalham itself, both the 11kV feeds to the final xfmrs and the 240/415V distribution are all underground.

That is also the case in the "warm" states like Arizona, California, and Nevada. It's very similar - the high voltage stuff is overhead and then dives underground for LV distribution.

And of course, the dense parts and downtowns of most American cities is 100% underground.

Pic and info submitted by RODALCO:

Venice & Washington Blvds, Los Angeles

Near as I can tell, 2x 138KV ckts on top, either 21 or 12KV below that, older 4160V ckt below that. The quad below that feeds from a transformer across the street primaried from the above 4160 and then goes underground,
on the bottom various telecom, cable, etc..





Ave 152, Tulare County (rural)

138KV & 12KV on the same arm





Same pole line, where the 12KV begins to run next to the 130KV



This is a more typical pole layout (also on the same road)

I must say that the first picture looks like something from a third-world country. Unbelievable.

It is LA, so consider the population density.

Off the intended subject, but....
Regular gas at $ 3.89?? Is that a current pic/price??

Guys here (NJ) are complaining that it's back 'up' to $ 1.59!!

Here's hoping that the 3.89 sign is an historical curiosity. May it remain so.

LoL.... Yes, the pic is from the end of August. I came across these while reuploading pics for the electricalphotos.com server. Were currently seeing around $1.89 for 87 here

No Way Randy!,
In pic#3, you'd at least think there would be a guy wire coming off that pole to an angle pole and a stay into the ground somewhere.
Especially when you consider the number of circuits coming of it in all directions