A new item under this subject heading for the POCO guys - something that I have wondered about for a while; a friend of a friend is a lineman but I always forget to ask him when we are hanging out so I'll shoot it out here. Sorry, no pics at the moment.
About every 3rd pole, sitting next to the insulator for each phase of the HV lines there is a vertical cylinder that resembles a skinny insulator, about 8-10 inches tall, one for each phase. Each one is connected via a thin solid conductor to the HV line, but it never appears there is any other connection either between phases or to ground. My only guess is these are capacitors to either stabilize voltage under normal conditions and/or to absorb surges such as from lightning. There are so many of them (since they are on every 3rd pole) that the total capacitance would be extremely large so this would be possible. BUT, with no connection to ground or another conductor I'm not so sure...
Any guesses?