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High power electrical lines.

I've never worked on them directly, but I am employed by a major utility and was in the substation side of things for ~5 years (now in generation).

Where was Darwin here? These guys are just stupid. That is all.

I'm not sure what you mean by your friends TV glowing....
 
What's crazy is the miles of power lines in this country that are inspected by helicopter pilots. They fly between large arrays of wires, often where there's a break in the trees...that makes air currents less predictable. I couldn't find a video of those guys from the US, but here are some guys hotwashing the insulators.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcjhjna9jZE

I notice there are a lot of drone videos....so it looks like they're doing more visual inspections by cameras using UAVs. The helicopter guys are crazy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGywP1-ZPAk
 
inachu said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szSij4KmkoM


Anyone ever work on them or live near one?


My friend in Texas did and said when he turns off the tv for the night it remains glowing sometimes because his house is situated about 100 yards or a tad bit more from the towers.
Click to expand...

His TV glows because the phosphors that coat the inside of the screen take a little bit to discharge, not because of a holywood-like magnetic field.
I've never done high line work but we sometimes deal with 28kv on the primary side of service transformers. It's a different world from the 240v in your house. At those voltages you have to bond a bleed off path for the insulator or current will actually travel down the outside of the thick coating and murder you 😱
 
Speaking of crazy, helicopters, and power lines. Have you seen what they use to trim trees along power lines?
helichopper10.jpg


Also, I think some types of televisions always glow for a bit after you turn them off. My DLP does it. (Edit: Thank you stormkroe)
 
inachu said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szSij4KmkoM


Anyone ever work on them or live near one?


My friend in Texas did and said when he turns off the tv for the night it remains glowing sometimes because his house is situated about 100 yards or a tad bit more from the towers.
Click to expand...

This has nothing to do with the power lines. The current going through transmission lines is kept low, which in turn keeps the EMF around each conductor low. At 100yards, you're talking very low numbers, in the mG range. Not enough to effect any electronics.
 
inachu said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szSij4KmkoM


Anyone ever work on them or live near one?


My friend in Texas did and said when he turns off the tv for the night it remains glowing sometimes because his house is situated about 100 yards or a tad bit more from the towers.
Click to expand...

Ha, no. If you take a fluorescent bulb under a high voltage line it will sometimes glow, depending on conditions. But a TV will not be affected from 100 yards away. I live about 100 yards from a line, btw.
 
Mixolydian said:
I don't understand why anyone would want to live close to them. :hmm:
Click to expand...

Major eyesore and possibly noisey = cost goes down. I guess if you're on a budget it wouldn't be so bad, lol.

We had the luxury of building a new station for a factory that was going in in upstate NY. The land that was acquired for the new station was smack dab in the middle of a high-end neighborhood. My manager had to go to neighborhood meetings along with every other big-shot involved to explain why and how and when and everything else under the sun about the station. In the end, the cost of making this thing "camouflaged" and just damn near sound-proof was unreal. The "fence" that was put around it was custom painted to match the surroundings. That wasn't enough though - they then trucked in all sorts of tall shrubs and trees and mulch to get this thing so you couldn't even SEE the fence. The transformers were encased in these cube-type walls that was so tall they ended up painting it sky blue so it sorta blended in with the sky. I wish I had pictures.
 
Mixolydian said:
I don't understand why anyone would want to live close to them. :hmm:
Click to expand...

If you live in the suburbs around NYC it is pretty hard to avoid at least being in the sight line of one. They're all over the place.

I'd love to see this kind of infrastructure buried, but the costs just don't work out in most applications.
 
I've worked under them. When you touch a piece of metal in the ground, you complete the connection, and you can feel the electricity go through your fingers. Working under them also gives me a headache. I wouldn't own property where they were near the house.
 
lxskllr said:
I've worked under them. When you touch a piece of metal in the ground, you complete the connection, and you can feel the electricity go through your fingers. Working under them also gives me a headache. I wouldn't own property where they were near the house.
Click to expand...

I spent 7 years as a heavy equipment and crane operator for an electrical/irrigation utility in CA. We often parked our equipment on the canal banks...under the transmission lines. You had to be very careful on foggy mornings when you first went to get in a piece of equipment...was more than once that I'd reach for a door handle and....
aap.gif


I also used to have to take a lattice boom crane into the electrical sub-stations to change out transformers and the like...often having to work in-between the high voltage lines...and distances CLOSER than what the law allows. (electrical utilities have some exemptions to those working rules) Fucking hair on my arms and neck would stand up...😱
 
My son worked on a few transmission lines a few years ago. On one job, they were putting in another transmission line about 100 yards from the first transmission line. Even though it wasn't "live", a bad ground on one of the poles meant getting bit. He's now on the generation side of things, where it's a lot safer for him.
 
DrPizza said:
My son worked on a few transmission lines a few years ago. On one job, they were putting in another transmission line about 100 yards from the first transmission line. Even though it wasn't "live", a bad ground on one of the poles meant getting bit. He's now on the generation side of things, where it's a lot safer for him.
Click to expand...

On a dry, breezy day an ungrounded run of moderate size (parakeet ACSR) can measure in excess of 50k volts! There is quite a bit of capacitance too, sort of like a linear Leyden jar. If it shocks you, it will be quite painful and can knock you out!

As far as living in close proximity, the physiological effect is nil but electronics and unbalanced audio systems may be susceptible to lower signal to noise ratio.

CRTs are a thing of the past but when TVs and computer monitors used them transmission lines > 230kV could cause picture shimmy due to the AC fields.

You could bury coils beneath them and "capture" energy via the transformer effect to supplement the power needs of your homestead. I would not recommend this as it's questionable both legally and morally. 😉

Higher power lines enable you to hold 8' T12 FL lamps in the air and be the next Star Wars kid...
 
Is a small golf course down here used to play at has them running right through the middle of.

Whenever a big storm came in and we were out there was run like hell time.

Still have a slightly smaller transmission lines that are pretty heavy just across the street actually.

Welcome to Mainlands Golf Club!

http://mainlandsgolf.com/


Pretty nice little course actually, but ya have to watch when the T-Cells roll in.
 
i live a couple yards away from them. You can hear them buzzing and when its raining.. they sizzle.
 
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How are they not getting killed? It's one thing doing that from a helicopter but they're a ground. :hmm: Even from a helicopter you'll get a bit of lighting bolts as you need to equalize yourself first before you get on the line. Electricity can be really interesting at these really high voltages.

I have a 7200kv (guessing) line passing behind my house, but I don't notice any kind of interference with anything. Never thought of getting a neon tube out at night to see what it does, but I don't think it would do anything at that voltage. One thing I do occasionally hear though is the fuse popping. It's like someone firing a shot gun. :awe: I learned to just call hydro when it happens as nobody else really knows to do it. For a small zone like that they wont know the power is out unless people call. I have about 4 hour run time on my batteries and they usually have a 1-2 hour response time. They actually came to trim all the trees a while back and that helped, but once in a while it pops anyway. This is an old neighborhood so the wiring/fuse is probably rated too low for the AC units and such that run in summer.
 
inachu said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szSij4KmkoM


My friend in Texas did and said when he turns off the tv for the night it remains glowing sometimes because his house is situated about 100 yards or a tad bit more from the towers.
Click to expand...


TV's do that. In fact the boob tubes would glow when you used a photo flash on them. When I was a kid I would hold my hand in front of the TV and use a photo flash and think it was a X-ray. Some years latter Nickelodeon came out with a toy to make images on your TV with the same idea.
 
VulgarDisplay said:
I would imagine that boom is somehow not conductive either so they can't reach ground.
Click to expand...

Correct.

Lines with multiple conductors per phase are usually 500 kV (or above). At sixty hertz, there's going to be big voltage differences between the line voltage and whatever static voltage their bucket happens to be at. Move your fingers close enough and the voltage difference will break down the insulation strength of the air gap. Keeps happening because the conductor voltage is always changing. Very small current flow needed to bring the bucket up/down to the current line voltage. Notice that the other bucket has a line clamped onto the conductor so that its voltage is locked into whatever the varying (60 Hertz) line voltage is at that moment.
 
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