Hmm. I don't know. BTW, Narragansett Electric used a similar type of primary wire set up in certain areas before NGrid took over.

This is called an "Armless Construction" setup. Holyoke was big with that untill they began the 13.8kv Upgrade in the city. They now use wooden crossarms. this circuit is some of whats left of the old 4kv primary. this road next year will be upgraded to 13.8 and have the wooden crossarms installed.

Natioal Grid uses the wooden crossarms here too. Narragansett Electric used crossarms too, but some of them appear shorter than the modern ones.....

We use 4', 6' and 8' wooden arms here at WMECO. 6' is the most standard size used. we used 8' arms on 3 phase transformer setups to keep a good clearance from the cutouts.

We use 6 foot ones. The ones I saw that are really old look about 3-4 feet. I haven't seen any 8 foot ones yet. NGrid did a massive pole upgrade on the transmission lines over the coarse of this year. The poles have not gray insulators, but BLACK insulators!!! I'd like to see those used on the roads. They're ceramic too!

This is a BetaLED fixture, most likely 135w.

There are some near me, been up for a year already, and both still work. Not as bright as the ICC lighting, there you have enough LED fixtures to make it look like daylight. Whatever they have put there ( boxes are badged Beka, but contents are not) is bright, around a 400W MH in output.

We very rarely use cross arms here, and when we do they are always metal now. We did us to use wooden cross arms in the past but now all set ups will look something like this. This is one of the somewhat rare poles that actually has a cross arm, we also use quite a lot of concrete poles. Here we also tend to use 6, 8 and 10 foot tapered Es with some 4 footers (which are no longer installed) and the rare 12 foot arm.

I like the ideas of not using wooden crossarms because when Irene hit, lots of the crossarms here snapped right in two. Those hold up the most important and dangerous wires on the pole, so havign them snap in half is not good!

There's still some poles with crossarms in my area both the wood and the steel ones. Toronto also has a lot of crossarms too even some that look like they're at least a few decades old.

but it all comes down to cost is why whats on the pole.

I'm sure wooden ones are cheaper, that's the reason they still get used. Here the utility company is government owned so they aren't out to make a profit, because of that they seem to spend a lot more money on more expensive things.

Wood is definetly a lot cheaper than metal like you said. I like the look of armless construction....

The reason why we don't use armless construction anymore it because it's alot safer to work on primary because the lines are further apart.

Does that make the hendrix construction danderous too? i've always ondered how the primary lines can be so close like that without anythign hapening.

With the arm less set ups here the lines are at least 6 feet from ANY other line!

Here is another LED fixture that got replaced with another LED fixture.

Also, the pole has had its primary lines replaced and a wooden crossarm is now up with 15Kv Hendix Vice top insulators.