Question for Charlie Eldridge, Utility Power Guy

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richwaskowitz

Senior Member
Location
Shelby Twp. MI, near Detroit
In the Duquesne Light power company districts around Pittsburgh, I see these devices hung from streetlight arms. They seem to be powered by being plugged into an adapter between the photocell and its socket. They are about 10 inches cubed and have no other external indications as to their function. They are not on every light, but there a lot of them. My only guess is that they are transponders or transmitters that are used to relay information to a central location, perhaps to report power outages?

I was betting you would know what they are.
 
Re: Question for Charlie Eldridge, Utility Power Guy

Some would see those as big brother. Most likely they are for the radio read of the power meters.
 
Re: Question for Charlie Eldridge, Utility Power Guy

We use a company named Celnet to read our meters. Each meter must make contact with at least three receivers. Each of these forward the information to one of the bigger receivers that then forward the information to our operations center for processing. The system is very redundant so it needs a lot of receivers. That is what I suspect you are looking at. Each of these boxes would have a small antenna of some type. :D
 
Re: Question for Charlie Eldridge, Utility Power Guy

Unless that's just what they're telling the public.

Charlie, I have a similar question. I don't know if I've asked you before, if I have I forgot. I see these little antenna looking things on some of the big voltage tower conductors. I'm guessing that you guys might be using little radio gadgets to locate failures, or maybe even sense transmission quality.

Am I close?
 
Re: Question for Charlie Eldridge, Utility Power Guy

Sam, most of the devices on transmission towers are basically cell sites. We have installed several on our transmission towers around town. As long as the tower has enough strength for the additional transverse loading, we will add the antenna to the top of the tower.

Most cell sites will have up to three different companies on the same tower, we will not permit more than one per tower (at least, I don't think we do).

By the way, Tom's previous answer was right on, I was just trying to add more information. :D
 
Re: Question for Charlie Eldridge, Utility Power Guy

So it is "Big Brother"? :D

I think you're talking about something else Charlie. These guys are little 6 or maybe 8 inch type things on each of the conductors. I haven't looked at any in a while and I'm a terrible utility I-witness so I can't add any detail until I see another one.

[ April 15, 2005, 04:10 PM: Message edited by: physis ]
 
Re: Question for Charlie Eldridge, Utility Power Guy

If they are on the conductors, they are probably vibration dampers to stop galloping and conductor wear. :D
 
Re: Question for Charlie Eldridge, Utility Power Guy

Near the insulators where they're secured to the tower.

This could go on for a while. :D
 
Re: Question for Charlie Eldridge, Utility Power Guy

I too have seen these devices on a Duquesne Light Company streetlight near a house that my sister owns. The meters are not equipped with an AMR device so it must be some kind of power monitoring device for reporting outages.

DL's 14,400Y24,940 volt system is set up with a lot of remotely controlled section switches and circuit breakers. Because Pittsburgh has a lot of lightning because of the mountain uplift, automatice reclosing does not work. Therefore, they use strictly manual reclosing on the 14.4Y24.94 KV circuits because they need to wait a few minutes for a thundercell to stop machine gunning the circuit.

The 14.4Y24.94 KV system does have some line fuses for branch circuits and lots of fuses for transformers. They would need a power monitoring system to know what is knocked out. Customers do not necessarily call in outages. A lot of people live by themselves and would have a hard time calling in an outage at their apartment if they are at work.

However, the 2,400Y4,160 volt stuff does not have remotely controlled switches and quite a bit of it runs off of mini substations up to 500 KVA. In the case of quite a few mini substations the secondary uses fuses.
 
Re: Question for Charlie Eldridge, Utility Power Guy

Sam, I don't have a clue. I don't do transmission work so I am not familiar with all of their equipment. I am also guessing that your perspective is off because of the size of the towers (large things would look small). :D
 
Re: Question for Charlie Eldridge, Utility Power Guy

Bless your little haert Charlie. But even being aware of the distance my perspective could be off. So they could be like thirty inches long, cool.

I still think they're like government or PG&E mind control transmitters like Tom said. :D
 
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