odd sight on Saturday

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petersonra

petersonra

Senior Member
Location
Northern illinois
Occupation
engineer
I happened to be driving down a side street in my neighborhood Saturday. It's the same street I walk on with the beagle critter every morning.

I notice a small generator under a light pole. I can hear the generator running as I drive by. An extension cord is running from the generator up the pole and enters a gray box, about 2' X 2' X 1' just under the light.

I have walked by this 1000 times or more. Never gave the gray box much thought. In the back of my mind I figured it had something to do with the light, being as it is on a light pole.

My guess is that perhaps it contains an amplifier for the cable lines that are on the same pole, and for some reason they needed temporary power for the amplifier.

Of course my first thought when I see this generator and notice the extension cord going up the side of the pole is that its an awful small generator to be powering up the neighborhood.

I wish I had thought to stop and take a picture with my cell phone. The generator was gone Sunday morning when I walked by.
 
I'm pretty sure that it is exactly what you thought. Cable TV networks require amplification to extend the signal and usually rely upon commercial AC power to provide this. In many instances, these power supplies are installed and are awaiting the electrical contractor to install a permanent service to feed them. These power supplies include backup batteries to carry the system in the event of a commercial power failure as well. I've even seen some of them that have a small natural gas generator attached permanently in some areas. With CATV providing so much more these days than just television, these companies have to address outages a lot more seriously than they used to.
 
It's asignal booster and power injector of sorts. Around here we have those boxes, the are filled with car sized batteries. I assume it was a Honda generator and maybe it was chained to the pole?

From what I hear, to meet the E911 standards they (cable, VOIP)
have to maintain a back up power source, it's Distributed throughout their network. I would say he power was out to the unit.
 
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Agree, its the cable company signal booster, usually one every 1/2 to 1 mile. Someone hit a pole near me the morning of Superbowl Sunday a few years ago, which held the booster. They scrambled to get everything back up and put the new booster on a genset for 24 hours (have to get the game to the customers or they'll have a riot!).

I was tempted to walk up and pull the choke just before halftime and see how long until someone showed up. (evil grin).
 
Ahh, I thought you said it was hanging from the street light arm. That's definitely a CATV power supply. There was a power outage that lasted longer than the backup batteries could sustain.

-Hal
 
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