Thick, black ribbed overhead power lines. Including ABC termination.
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 23 апр 2019
- If you've ever seen overhead lines and wondered what they look like up close then here's your chance without being electrocuted in the process.
In this video I look at bare overhead copper wires and their spacers and also the new ABC Aerial Bundled Cable/Conductor lines.
If you work in power distribution let me know in the comment section how you've found reliability of the ABC cable in your part of the world.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm 
Наука
![KFF Singapore Badminton Open 2024 | Alfian/Ardianto (INA) [7] vs. Liang/Wang (CHN) | QF](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/g0QGafkoT2o/mqdefault.jpg)
The section of copper conductor you have is known in the industry as 0.1 (point one) it is 70mm^2 in cross sectional area. You're right about the wire arrangements being neutral at the bottom, phases above, Starting at the bottom going up is neutral, L3(Grey/Blue), L2(Black/Yellow), L1(Brown/Red), Switch wire for street lighting.
In the midlands the switch wire is obsolete and disconnected, but left up due to the risks involved removing it as most "open wire" lines do not have insulation on the phases/neutral and can only be achieved during a shutdown.
Street lamps used to be connected to the neutral and switch wire and the switch wire was controlled by a time clock mounted to the pole which had to be periodically adjusted as to come on when the sun started to set/rise.
Now a days each street lamp has a light sensor mounted on the top of the lamp and a constant live feed into the street light, each street light now determines its self when to come on, thus making the switch wire obsolete.
The theory behind neutral on the bottom is for safety in the event of something long and conductive coming into contact with the power line (such as a scaffolder carrying tubes upright) as they would most likely contact the neutral first before any of the phases directing the current to neutral rather than down the object grounding through a person. however this has the flaw that if something like a lorry is to clash only the neutral and bring it down the electricity consumers have no neutral and in a PME property, they will also have no earth.
A downed neutral becomes live due to the imbalanced neutral current trying to return to earth. To try and mitigate this risk an earth stake is attached periodically down poles and connected to the neutral.
On old domestic open wire services you usually find the phase on the bottom and the neutral on top, in this case the property still has a neutral/earth and power is cut off from the property, If the property loses its neutral/earth it will make all earth bonded surfaces live as the phase current has no return path. thus will find a return path through an unsuspecting person when they touch a metal sink...
ABC is designed as a fully water tight system and comes in 4 flavors, 35mm^2, 50mm^2, 95mm^2 and 120mm^2. and in single or three phase bundles. ive not seen a 5 wire bundle before with a smaller switch wire so i can only assume this was wrapped into the bundle?
The ABC you have is a section of 95mm^2 three phase, with a 50mm^2 phase wrapped into the bundle as a switch wire...
The insulation on ABC is XLPE (Cross-linked polyethylene) with UV mitigation as to not deteriorate in the sun. Their are a range of connectors, lugs and caps for the ABC system to maintain its water tightness.
The reason for keeping the aluminium watertight is unlike copper which oxides and the oxide film protects and does not flake off, Aluminium oxide peels away nicely rusting the conductors much like if they where made of iron/steel.
The connector you used on the ABC is known as an IPC (Insulation piercing connector), It is used for connecting ABC to ABC and Isn't rated for connecting ABC to Copper meter tailing like you did. These IPC's are range taking and come in a few different sizes so you can connect 95mm^2 ABC to 35mm^2 ABC or 35 to 35... or 120 to 50....
The connection teeth/plates inside are tinned copper as these provide a metal harder than aluminum so they bite into, but also conduct well, The reasons for the tinning is to mitigate the effects of copper salts attacking and corroding aluminium at an accelerated rate.
The reason for the shape of teeth, 2 larger and 2 smaller teeth are for load taking when these connectors are put on live, The arc that occurs burns the teeth away so in an attempt to mitigate this these connectors have sacrificial teeth to take the loading and good teeth to make a good connection. In harsh load pick up (50+ amps) its easy to burn the connection completely up before the torque bolts sheer. Most linesman will have found this out the hard way by having the whole connection catch fire while still in their hand.
Their are "transitional Joints" which have teeth one side to accommodate ABC and tinned copper plates the other side to connect onto bare wires, the plates simply press down onto each side of the bare conductor.
Their are also Lugs designed specifically for ABC which have a watertight plastic jacket to keep water away from the conductor.
As well as "mid spans" which are butt connectors designed to also take the tension in case of sheered conductors, these are also in a plastic jacket to keep water out.
Ooooh, very informative. Would have loved to had you over for a cuppa. Cheers.
We still use a switched street lighting core here because the lights are switched off during the night. They still have a dusk sensor for efficiency. Interesting about the sacrificial teeth on the IPC connector. I wondered if it was for alignment on the round core and also to compensate for the core shape.
bigclivedotcom that’s an interesting repurpose of the switch wire!
@@bibo159 - just to clarify, when he says "during the night", it's like 1am to 5am or suchlike when hardly anyone, often nobody is around to make use of them, and so it's just a complete waste. They're still left on during hours where they're actually useful, not turned off as soon as darkness falls and only back on when dawn breaks ;-)
@@markpenrice6253 Yeah street lighting near me does the same down small residential roads, I meant it was interesting that the switch wire was once designed to turn the lights on and now it is repurposed to switch lights off.
How long did it take for your neighbors to get their power back? ;->
Jim Fortune
About 80cm?
They would still overheat their electricty provider's phones if Clive's next video wouldn't be about telephone lines.
Today's newspaper title: "Massive Power outage on the isle of man"
You're all wrong. Double Ought and seven days. (Also known as "Four Scorch"). You are very close, FarlsXD. ;-)
We are not going to be able to enjoy the Isle of Man TT for a while. Just Kidding!! Double Ought is only a few milliseconds.
Highly conductive.
It takes single day to replace the cables, it is done in sections so every evening your power is restored._
Hi Clive. Love the channel! I work in the electricity utility industry (South East DNO), looking after the Distribution assets so have had a lot of experience with ABC and other types of LV OHL. This video is therefore right up my alley! ABC has been extensively used, and we now use it for all LV OHL refurb or reinforcement jobs (first preference being 'undergrounding' to remove the risks associated with OHL). The current carrying ability of 4-wire ABC is generally better than open wire, there's a lot less volt drop. We also find it's more resilient to fallen trees and will often bounce right back into position after fallen trees are cut away from the lines. There are also the improved safety aspects with third parties (both humans and animals) plus less likelihood of fun sparking and arcing with clashing conductors in windy weather.
retepetsir
“Fun sparking”? What’s that?
Ha, just describing the fireworks that can result with some phase to phase contact in high winds.
retepetsir Hi,
Tx! I get the idea. ;)
Here in Costa Rica, many monkeys and sloths get electrocuted when climbing on OHL. Are these ABC wires a lot more expensive than open conductors? This would be a great solution!
How well does it cope with lightning strikes?
I saw "Thick black ribbed" and wondered what the hell Clive had bought from Ebay *now* :P
Not that that's a problem
His usual fare of adult goodies I suspect!!!
When on full power you don’t want these toys anywhere near your body.
For her pleasure.
Same here! Had to immediately make sure that this statement had been covered in the comments.
"Saves you guys having to steal a cherry picker and go up and play with live wires."
Yeah. Thanks, I guess.
Yeah! I was about to go and do exactly that! Life saver!
Hi Clive i work in the distribution industry and the Biggest problem we have with ABC connectors is when you go to tap a service on during on load conditions it seems to arc and breakdown but not usually to the point where its immediately noticeable. Usually a few weeks or even months go by then you start to have problems. To get round this we always use 2 connects when tapping services on live. And always 2 connectors for the neutral.
Thanks, Curtis
I am into electronic engineering. I have a degree in electrical engineering.
I learning about Din and Busbars.
You can buy allsort on amazon
Do they arc because the new service is already connected to some load? I don't see why there would be arcing if you connected a unloaded service wire to a live ABC wire. (I could be wrong - even on an unloaded conductor there'll be some potential difference).
So in your case, the first connector creates a circuit and satisfies the load - but arcs in the process of connecting, and the second doesn't arc and makes a long-lasting good connection. (I suppose, from an electrical point of view, you could then remove the first connector - but why bother since they are not reusable and now you have damaged insulator.)
We have always been told at work (west mids DNO) that IPC's should be used to pick up load, only fitted with the line dead, or load removed (C/O fuse out) . Because it burns the teeth of as you wind it in slowly. Of course the work around to this is to whizz them up with an impact most of the way and then shear them off by hand.
Speaking as a "light current" electrical engineer, I think this is your most brilliant video ever. This is the stuff they never show us at University!
I've always wondered what the bare wires look like close up, so many thanks for satisfying my curiosity! Also for taking the crimp off afterwards to see what it did to the wire, very interesting.
Berkeloid come to Oklahoma in the summer after a thunderstorm they’re usually laying on the ground.
Im a lineman apprentice in Norway and i have used those clamps in -26 c so they work in cold weather.
Ruben Olaussen 220 or 400 phase to phase ?
Haven't noticed 20 minute pass by. Interesting topic, good voice, actual interest in topic by Clive that makes you follow his path of thought real fun.
Hey Clive! I'm a power lineman in the US and we use the ABC cable (we call it "overhead triplex" extensively for residential and commercial electrical service. We even have a 4 conductor type for 3 phase service, called "quadplex". Our ABC is a bit different than over there, in that the neutral conductor is always bare and serves as support for the entire bundle.
The neutral can also be ACSR (aluminum strands around a galvanized steel core) as a strength member in triplex/quadruplex.
You alluded to it at the end of the video, but the aluminium thing isn't just cost - when the wire is hanging under its own weight aluminium does have the advantage due to its higher strength at a given resistance or weight, ( matched for either, the aluminium will be superior in the third by a factor of two)
It is a little trickier to work with - any oxidation and it forms an almost completely insulating layer, and it will corrode on contact with copper . that's what the coating on the teeth is for - probably tin or zinc , nickel would be magnetic.
That's why the connectors are much more heavily engineered than the copper- most of the historical problems with aluminium wiring were due to the connection points. That and the fact that older alloys would sag over time, bit that has been eliminated recently
Holy shit, how much innuendo can one actually cram into a vid about wires! 😂
by this point i'm in tears! @8:35
@@uzlonewolf And outside the building, they talk about PUSHING PIPE! :)))
You've reminded me of the "bee sting" connectors we used to use to tap into thick Ethernet coax back in the 1990's... It would be fun to find some unused parts and show the modern world where we came from...
Indeed. These "vampire connectors", as we called them, where quite ingenious.
Vampire taps! \m/
I never managed to fit one of those without taking out the Ethernet segment, although they claimed you could.
Oh man there's some memories...around 1993 ish I ran coax down the wall behind my house about 5 houses down to my friend's place so we could share files. 10mbps Ethernet was slow by today's standards but it was a helluva lot faster than walking down to Chris's house with a handful of floppy disks!
shuddupshuddupshuddup... the nightmares had begun to fade...
Hi Clive, we have changed over now to ABC
"The better cable" despite missing out on Neighbour's navigating them with long aluminium ladders & blue flashes, lights flickering on dark stormy nights. The wind whistling around the new cable drives me nuts. "First signs of dementia?"
Bring back the old. Curb the population through natural selection & I get a reason to buy a big UPS unit ;-) love your channel.
I work in subs but in training was told that the neutral is at the bottom because if you loose one of the phase conductors its more likely to short with the neutral and active the protection rather than risk people coming into contact with a fallen conductor.
Also I believe you can get some Arial cables with sperate neutral and earth. But it does look like a street lighting circuit.
Would you be able to get some 11kV, 132kV or 230kV+ cable to show us at all?
It's not often you get to see the steel cables up close and how they fit into the ceramic explosive fuses.
There are some in my class I'll take a video when I get the chance to do so
I have some HV underground singles here.
pmailkeey The pylons wouldn't fit. Maybe a single ceramic isolator could be shown in studio 2. 9 inches at 400V phase to phase corresponds to a hefty distance at 400kV.
I'll grab a couple from work
@@bigclivedotcom Interesting! I know the grid on Isle of Man doesn't really have much in the way of larger gauge grid delivery cables (230kV+).
I....have something to admit though..I know a bit about all of this as an E/E Engineer..but..i just want some stiff, thick and long hard objects to look at and I know you always deliver clive
My day started with thick black ribbed overhead power. Thanks big bear Clive!
I've learned so much from you since I discovered this channel!
Why is this comment 3 days older than the video?
@@francescoparavidino Patreons get early access to the videos.
@@Alan2E0KVRKing that explains it
@@francescoparavidino Good question! Maybe he just copy/paste's it on all channels he/she watch's.
He’s a time lord 🥸
During one uni summer I worked in a magnet factory. My boss was a solid Physics grad. They used Al conductors when it suited but he explained TBF there's no straight advantage from a Physics perspective (magnets were typ 220V dc): it's all economics. I was shown a scrap magnet recovered by the police after thieving. They'd angle-ground into the core, seen Al, and buggered off. Like I say, it's all economics.
Less copper can be used
I work at an electrical utility, we have phased out the street light switch wire and moved to PE cell lamps. Switch wires were traditionally used with timers when PE cell tech wasn't available. Having the lamp directly powered from the mains and self switching has many benifits. Less conductor to maintain, less safety issues with conductors that are only periodically live, easier fault finding, more reliable street lighting and less weight/wind load on the structures making them cheaper to build and replace.
That's another reason aluminium is used instead of copper these days, it's cheaper and lighter and as you mentioned not as desirable for scrap.
when your crazy Scottish neighbour hacks down the power lines outside so he could have a better look at the bench
We use a fibreglass stirrup and a thyssenkrupp plastic insulated metal cable tie. We don't tend to use vertical orientations with LV - it takes up too much space on the pole. Makes it a hand-operation to install it. Horizontal is also great for galloping cables - they tend to move together - especially when we add stirrups.
We use the same kind of ID clamps - we use cabac (Australia). The gel is not really needed for waterproofing - it's used to prevent chemical interactions between the aluminium and the copper.
These clamps are absolutely perfect in any non-tension installation. We have about 1.2 million of them in our network and I've only ever seen 20 failures over my 10 years working in the industry - typically because installers have loaded the connector up incorrectly
I've been in interested in electronics my whole life so I've absorbed some information there, and now here on RUclips with you I'm learning quite a lot about electrical systems. Thank you!
“Ribbed for your protection.” Not quite the familiar phrase.
I kept waiting him to say, "ribbed for her pleasure" every time he said it.
@@PyroRob69 Me too !
@@PyroRob69 ...or his pleasure, deary. Do appreciate equal delight.
Me "FOUR", PLAY, Yes you "BEAT" ME !
It is really spooky just how similar the cable and termination methods are for electrical distribution and telecoms termination. The 20 or 50 pair overhead cables that supply phone service are referred to as aerial cables. They have a ribbed steel wire on the outside with an internal grease filled bundle of cables wrapped in 10's. The steel wire in the phone cables are only there to support the cable but they are supposed to be earthed on the E side onwards (E side means from exchange) I was called out by the fire brigade from our emergency centre once. A lorry had hit the telephone pole or stick as we call them and had pulverised the pole ! Not an easy thing to do and it did cut the lorry cab in two. This was at a junction with the pole on a small island in the middle. The bottom part of the pole was gone but 3/4 of the pole was still there suspended from the 50 pair cable. A very strange sight that's for sure !
The cables that go from the junction box (or DP - Distribution point) to the house has two twisted pairs for service and three steel support wires to well support the cable. It is amazing just how strong they are. The cable is attached to the customers house with an expanding bolt that has an eye on the end. It brought back memories watching you wrap on that separator as the phone cable at both ends uses a very similar method. We used a formed steel wire in the same shape as the seperator you have there but it also has a powder like rough service to increase the friction. The wire is supposed to be formed round the cable and not the other way round as you get failure points if you do that (though most engineers do as it is far easier). This can split the outer coating of the line cable and allow water ingress that eventually rots the cable. These clamps are amazingly strong and I have actually seen where a very high lorry has hit the cable the brick has been pulled out the wall. It will rip a soffit of the front of a house easily so that's why expanding bolts into the brick are used.
As you would imagine the rules around climbing a "joint pole" that has ABC cables on it to are very strict. A 1.5M separation has to be kept and the pole must be accessed using fibreglass ladders that weigh a damn ton have to be used, the pole must be marked with an "E" red plate and its a two man working job so control have to raise an assist job so you end up waiting hours for another engineer and then get a bollocking for your jobs per day but I wont get into the politics ! In order to be authorized to climb a joint services pole you have to complete an "overhead" course, written test and physical exam. Poles that have or are adjacent to 11KV services have to be accessed by a cherry picker.
I just wonder if the IDC termination methods were copied from the post office (who used to own the network years ago) or if it was the other way round as the termination methods are very similar. We even used grease filled jelly crimps to connect wires together overhead, underground and at the main cabinets and the cable retention methods are very similar. We are supposed to cable from blue, orange, green, brown slate in that order and the linesman on the grid use for example blue phase on the first house, yellow on the second and red on the third to balance the load.
Strange how two different services have so much in common. As a PTO I had to go and complete a linesman course funnily enough in Glasgow. A very interesting video and I am sure it will be of great interest to people. Great work as always my friend.... Keep it up and if you managed to read all of this you get a "waffle resistant" certification ........... :-D
So , you were 'The lineman for the county ! "
Funny, but I have background from both the power distribution and the telephone cable (manufacturing, not installing). The grease was added to the telephone cables when they changed from paper to plastic insulation. If a paper got wet, it swelled and the water did not “travel” too far, like just a few meters. If a plastic cable got damaged and water penetrated it, water could go end to end. The grease filling blocks or reduces the water propagation.
The very original aluminum cables for power were normally stranded, but very quickly the compaction became the norm. The reason was to reduce tehe outside diameter and need of insulation quantity. The installers suffered the other outcome - stiffening.
Yes Stu,Is not it ,hmmmm ? !
@@InssiAjaton That was the primary reason for the "E" or exchange side paper wrap cables to be pressurised. There is nothing as fun as soldering tabs on a 150v ISDN cable with your hand surrounded by sharp cable wrap or solder terminals................ Then the compressor would kick on with no warning. We used to call it "frame rash" That is something I do not miss ....... :-)
@@paulnewcombe3373 What is not it ????
Can't say how many times I've looked up at these cables in the UK and wondered about their construction and operation. So thanks Clive for a very informative video.
A friend's dad was a chartered engineer. As a student I got to see his mates at work on a call out. They were repairing stuff under the street. I think it was 1890's cable that was still good. I know 1890's cable was still in use in the 1980's.
Thanks Clive. Thanks to the nice Manx Beard Club member who kindly lent Clive the subject of this video.
In the US we been using aluminium ABC type overhead lines for service feeds to homes and buildings for years. We use galvanized steel for the high voltage primary conductors. The very old lines were copper but most of that has been phased out and replaced with the galvanized wire.
In fact I have a job lined up where I have to run some of this wire in a buried conduit as a supply for a guest house..
The grease is used to stave off corrosion due to the different metals used in the field (copper, aluminium, galvanized steel) and weather / environment effects on said metals. I use the same grease in circuit breaker panels on the main conductor lugs, so they do not corrode over time and it helps with the tightening of the lugs..
Our street lighting in urban areas is 277 volts mainly especially the non aerial lines (buried). Some are 120 or 230 volts but those are private property lights sold by the power company usually. Interesting to note on 277 volts is that many commercial and industrial buildings here run 277 for building lighting..
277V would be single phase voltage from a 480V three phase service. NO-Ox is one of the dielectric/anti-oxidant greast brand names commonly used in the US, particularly for connections to aluminum conductors (residential service entry cables mainly) but can be used for copper as well.
@@timothybarney7257 yeah I was not going into details because it can get lengthy but you are correct about the 277 supply. I assumed when i mentioned commercial and industrial that people would realize i was talking about 3 phase.. Another leg of 3 phase is 208 volts commonly called the "wild leg" (phase 1 to neutral) and is common in smaller facilities like say the corner store or a small shop that requires 3 phase power..
I have to ask.. where are you living where galvanized steel is used for primary?? I've been in the power line industry for 13 years (lineman) and I've never seen galvanized steel high voltage primary. 99% of the conductor I've seen has been ACSR (aluminum conductor steel reinforced) or AAAC (all aluminum alloy). Steel is an absolutely terrible conductor and I can't imagine it being used for any modern power line, even low voltage.
@@andrewkeepers431 Could the OP have mistaken strand cable for primary?
@@timothybarney7257 Possibly, he may have seen steel messenger used with telephone cables or he was looking at aerial HV cable (spacer cable) which is supported by steel stranded wire.
Oh wow, the bolts designed to shear is a very cool concept!
At least, ones with a weaker outer layer designed to shear once when being tightened but leave an easily removable (and stronger, so unlikely to itself shear) inner core behind. All bolts will eventually shear given enough torque, after all (or in some cases, strip the threads), but usually that's a bad thing because you'll have the devil's own job to remove them afterwards.
This bundle wire is named AsXSn here in Poland and commonly used for low-voltage (ie 400/230VAC) overhead grids which are very common also in urban areas. All of the conductors are marked with a number of ribs too - neutral has none. I haven't worked with these kinds of wire though, though I'm pretty experienced with indoor domestic wiring. Always loving to learn something new about electrical engineering.
That's magnesium plated copper for dieletric connections between copper and aluminum or you get eletrolyis between the disimilar metal. Galvanic chart.
@Andy XxX Corrosion implies oxidation. I'm not sure what the exact process is but back when they built our house (early 1970s) the vogue was to use aluminum wiring. It caused quite a number of house fires. The fix was to crimp copper pigtails onto the wire ends using special crimps (probably the 'magnesium plated copper'). Our house has them all now -- except for one neutral connector in one socket where we've got the special aluminum wire socket still (looked at constantly....). Best solution is to junk the runs when appropriate. (BTW -- I'm in the US -- I can't see aluminium taking off in the UK for house wiring.)
Ah good old penatrox. It's a grease we use on bi-metallic Kearney's helps keep the electrolysis away when tapping aluminum conductors to copper.
Kearneys?
@@NeuronalAxon it's a type of electrical connector. Aka the split bolt. Here's a copper one.
www.elecdirect.com/split-bolts-grounding-products/split-bolt-connectors/copper-alloy-2-conductors-4-sol-1-0-str/?geoip=us&ppc_keyword=&gclid=Cj0KCQjwla7nBRDxARIsADll0kDWYNrSuba2aX1rDlWa6VUesZ6akyYVeYhE4XD-3BxLndSkHrMsF7MaAqU-EALw_wcB
@@Indy509 - That's really interesting - thanks for the reply.
you have a wonderful collection of some of the most annoyingly unique and useful looking tools around, sir.
When I was a child in the 1970s the migrating swallows, swifts and house martins used to congregate on the 3 phase power supply that ran up the road overhead. The lines were black with them for the quarter mile to the underpass for a week or too before they upped and offed to Africa for the winter. Nowadays there are less birds, so the single bundled cable the electricity supply company installed last year suits the situation. Sadly.
It cost too much to put the little rubber boots on the swallow's feet. Now no need to, since the conductor is insulated.You don't need swan balls for abc, either.
This was awesome video Clive, thank you!! I would say those teeth are likely cupro nickel or aluminum bronze and then tin coated. Very high conductivity and far harder than copper to made a good bite without deforming.
You should feature some XPLE cable , this is used for carrying the primary feeds underground. The splicing/termination requirements are much more involved as you have to maintain the dielectric integrity of the connection.
yea its pretty neat stuff, Ive been working on and off with our companies medium voltage division as they have been installing 15kv and watching them terminate it was interesting. I did it once in a lab but not the same as in the field
Hallo Big Clive, truly enjoy your show. I would bet money that the silver colored coating of the copper bridging plates is in fact silver. Silver oxide is conductive, unlike aluminum or copper, helping ensure a good contact. Most controller contacts are also coated/plated with a commercial silver to ensure they stay conductive over the life of the contacts. The copper is not pure, but an alloy to increase its hardness, at the cost of ductility. Keep up the good work!
In school/college I was told they use aluminium in high voltage over head cables because. whilst it has higher resistivity than copper by volume/area it has lower resistivity by weight and so it makes sense to use steel cored aluminium conductors for that purpose.
As far as ABC stretch, ther is a run just down the street that has had a tree come down on it, and has been running almost a month sitting about 5 meters lower than normal without any loss of service
Report it, dial 105!
The copper grips are probably plated to prevent galvanic corrosion between the alluminium and copper. The plating is probably tin.
Or nickel which is commonly used exactly for that as well as much harder than tin - which could matter a lot in the design of such "copper teeth".
@@Miseru99 I would say nickel also.
Isn't nickel ferromagnetic tho? That thing didn't stick to the magnet at all
@@cosimo8046 Slightly. You would need a hell of a magnet to get any discernible effect.
@@cougarhunter33 ... would a small neodymium still fix that for you, Jimmy? Or would you need something more hardcore?
Anyway I'd expect you'd need *something* to go on the outside of the copper, given that a doc on the TV last night highlighted how soft it was, and that it wasn't really any use for tools or weapons (anything you'd use to make a cut, indent, or bite into another piece of hard material) until the idea of alloying it - particularly with tin - to make bronze came along. Or it could just be a bronze alloy in the first place, as already used in plenty of electrical connections (the pins of a typical 13A plug of the old school, for example, although most seem to have switched to aluminium or at least some kind of silvery alloy), though the rather more reddish brown colour is sort of stark vs the golden hue that would then be expected.
I just completed a retirement community where I had to use over 600+ of those taps on SER cables for mains entrance pass-throughs to each individual unit.
I stripped the insulation just inside each tap for a better connection.
Added Nolox to each and tightened the tap down.
It's actually Aerial Bundled Conductor & there is also an 11kV version called IUC or Insulated Unscreened Conductor,here in Australia we use it extensively due to the catastrophic bushfires we endure.
In Kanukistan in the seventies we also had high copper prices and switched temporarily to aluminum for new home construction.
Trouble began when people started changing switches and outlets years later and home centers only had copper compatible devices by then.
This caused fires due to dissimilar metals causing a voltage drop and therefor heat.
The point being, that coating on the hardened copper connector may be for copper to aluminum transition.
I live in BC. My apartment still has Al wiring.
America too, its still an issues in older homes.
scene nb1 : Clive looking for a chery picker.
scène nb 2 : clive has found a chery picker.
scene nb 2 : Clive puts on some climbing spurs and ascends the poll.
This vid touches on why I now disassociate myself with the regs. After privatisation they no longer install proper SNE (TNS) earth. So with only PME (TNCS, although TNCS is not exactly PME) they have with a single stroke of the pen made every single new supply via overhead cables more dangerous across the nation. Twice I have personally seen the effects of the loss of the neutral to this earthing system but it's now your (or your electricians) responsibility to supply you with the most important conductor in your home. Even then if you have your own earthstake you would hardly want it used as a neutral under such conditions............another awesome vid, thanks Clive.....
In the UK there are a lot of lost PEN incidents. Probably because every single underground cable splice involves breaking it and putting a link across it.
i was so excited when you took them apart. i love that kind of thing for some reason.
clive you're scaring me questioning whether or not you should do things in this video haha "should I test it to see if there's a connection?" "Should I take it back apart to see how it looks?" YES YES YES!!! hahaha
Yep, linesman and distribution designer here.
The LV abc is pretty good if holes are sealed with mastic, expecially around the ocean. Depending on the exact accessories it can be problematic to phase out between transformers.
Certain birds like to chew on the abc insulation and short it out mid span.
Abc is much heavier and can be easily over stretched during installation.
We see internal corrosion (meters of it turn to powder) if the crimps aren’t greased. But we use IPC (internal piercing clamps) that maintain the insulation by pushing little teeth though. Good for 400A
That copper is 7/0.80
Great video Clive, why on earth people have given this thumbs down beats me, maybe a bunch of copper thieves looking for how they can carry out their dastardly deeds without frying themselves rather than do something helpful.
Really interesting. Thanks for taking the time. Great presentation style too
Always something interesting on Big Clive. That’s a very “short” circuit you have there, the cable is red most likely just years of oxide, arial conductors are hard drawn so they are always stiff as honeymoon wedding tackle, if they were soft drawn (annealed), they would stretch under the tension when they are being strung.
ABC is popping up everywhere here in Aus, I must admit it looks neater than multiple bare conductors, but it suffers from much higher capacitive losses and is generally aluminium, so not as good of a conductor either, but it has the advantage of being black and ribbed, thanks for another great video.
I was chatting to a friend who works with Western Power and he said the ABC had been very reliable so far. They tried a high voltage version and it failed quickly.
@@bigclivedotcom The closest thing to high-voltage ABC cable I've seen in use is "hendrix spacer cable", Google images has plenty of pictures if you haven't seen it before.
@@bigclivedotcom They had to replace kilometres of the stuff after only 7-8 years of it being in use.
I remember long ago, they were demolishing a whole street (including the roads) by me, and they tore up all the pre war power cables. We found(!) large pieces of it, this was useful as when you're 15 money is hard to come by. Steel outer sheath twisted on, a black tar cloth(?) Beneath that, lead with wax paper underneath and the beautiful copper, all shiny... 14p a kilo should give you a guess how many decades ago it was...
Nice, you "find" Copper , we find WW2 bombs If our streets are remodeled. 😂😂
Still happends quite often :/.
the worst part from that time would have been fighting off the dinosaurs.
14p hmmm 1960s when a pint of beer was like 5p or a bob?
girlsdrinkfeck you mean 5d, don’t you. 5p was after decimalisation and kg was introduced with SI units around 1968.
@@girlsdrinkfeck 1985_1987, 14p a kilo, Anyone knows kilos were not used in the 60's in the UK. For scrap weights. The street was redeveloped into better built boring little brick boxes instead of boring concrete ones.
The main reason that bare stuff is so stiff is because it's not annealed after drawing, unlike most copper wires. That's to keep it strong and stable in tension so it doesn't sag.
"Thick, black ribbed" and "Rigid".
Less than two minutes into the video, and you're already excelling yourself, with the euphemisms. 😁
The metal bits with the teeth are likely made from phosphor bronze. It is very commonly used in the power industry.
I agree -- probably the least expensive alternative. The other hard options would be tellurium copper and beryllium copper. Tellurium copper is favored in mechanical applications, as it is easier to machine (than the "gummy" pure copper). Beryllium copper is near steel in strength. And then there is aluminum oxide dispersed copper that is mainly used for resistance spot welding contact tips.
I lived in an area where the underground mains were put in just as aluminium became popular. Unfortunately, the insulation used was not robust enough to deal with the many sharp flints in the ground, so it gets pierced and water leaks in and corrodes the conductor. Of course, the electric company is unwilling to replace the whole thing, so instead they patch it constantly
They should've put it in a pipe.
OMG. There always must be a bedding and backfilling from a special material suited for this purpose. In my area, it looks like gray sand and it is very cheap. Cheaper than regular sand for making a concrete. There would be absolutely no problems, if they did the job correctly. Instead, they just burried the cables with the dirt they digged out. El cheapo electric company.
I was under the impression they always get run through pipes for this reason.
@@ales_xy That gray stuff sounds like cinders from burnt coal. While cheap, it does carry all kinds of heavy metal toxins, which will leach out when exposed to water.
@@YodaWhat No, it's kind of sand. It's cheaper, because it isn't suitable for concrete.
I'm going up the pole anyway. Your videos simply cause greater interest. Great work.
Remember to video it for RUclips in case you have a terrible accident.
Those shear nuts are a clever solution for getting the right torque without a torque wrench and someone who cares to use it. Nice.
In Denmark the neutral used to be on top, I believe to act as a lighting rod, as the neutral is connected to the ground.
But now almost all low tension distribution (230/400v) is in the ground. (No rock/cliff in Denmark)
As far as I know for LV individual conductors, that's the practice in the US as well. I've been told it is done for the case of trees coming down into the lines, the first thing hit is ground which (hopefully) provides enough contact as the tree continues to drop so the fuses blow and kills power to the lines.
Leif Neland Yep, and the 3 phases were named R, S and T with the mnemonic Root, Stem, Top for the sequence on the pole. The color marking in 400V distribution and feed cables have changed a few times over the years, so one has to be careful.
After a heavy storm almost 20 years ago that knocked out a lot of power lines, politicians pushed the power companies to implement a 20 year plan to eliminate all overhead connections. So after digging up every street, the birds have nowhere to land, at least not in a musical looking way.
@@timothybarney7257 It varies by electric company. The company here puts the neutral on the bottom.
When I worked for Western Electric as an installer in central offices (telephone switches), I could get a couple extra inches out of a piece of wire by wrapping it one turn around a screwdriver handle and running it up and down a few feet of tight wire. That was soft stuff.
You should have invested in an industrial cable stretcher.
@@TreeCamper I recommend the ICS model 4/1 cable stretcher. In the audio production business I will tell the new hire to get the XLR 4/1 cable stretcher from the grip truck.
@@comment2009 LoL
Impressed with the self-sheering bolt head caps :)
Love your channel, I would bet the plating on the copper bars that bite the wire is pure silver. Pure silver has been used in electrical contractors for quite a long time.
I expected the sound of a chain saw starting when you were pointing out the pole and wires at the beginning. Thanks for the vid and info - more interesting, but irrelevant knowledge for me!
Seeing it on the bench, my first thought was "Someones power is out tonight..." 🤣
Here in Australia they are upgrading many lines in rural areas to the ABC stuff. Its less likely to start a fire if a tree branch falls on the lines or if a storm brings the pole down.
Is that your own personal pronunciation of "grease" or have I just never heard a Scotsman say it before? Greez. Greeeeezzzz. Love it. Rhymes with ease, and avoids any confusion with Greece. I'm gonna start using it.
"Firrrrrm and rrrribbed"
I love scottish.
FesixGermany aye laddie
Is Clive originally from Scotland or Mann?
Scotland
Hi all,
I once reported my overhead cables to the electricity board, I could see the lower neutral copper cable had lost a few strands, and looked like it was holding on with one strand. I took a zoomed photograph for them to look at when they arrived. They disconnected my supply and took the old cables down, that last strand snapped like a dry twig.
They replaced the feed with Aluminium twisted pair.
I told my neighbour what they did and he phoned them and asked for new cables too, as his had been there as long as mine had. They replaced his too.
We had a loose neutral at my parents house when I was in school... We found out that's what it was after several months of tingling sensation in the shower. Eventually it turned into more of a zap, and that's when my parents called the electrician.... Who spotted the problem before he got to our house, and had the power company there before we even knew he'd arrived.
Good lord. I have an electrically heated shower... if I ever felt so much as a "tingle" whilst standing under it you wouldn't see my ass for dust getting not just out of the bath but the entire room... the cable feeding it's good for about 40 amps :-o
@@tin2001 That reminds me of a time we lived in a rented flat, the previous tenant had rewired (bodged) the entire flat, from low voltage (12v) connectors on the ring-main to missing earth bonding ETC. I often felt a tingle from the tap of the bath whilst touching ground.
I investigated and found out why it was only occasional. It turned out to be the immersion element in the water tank. I remember him mentioning that the immersion kept tripping, but he wouldn't go into detail, other than he said he had "fixed it". Well, he did "fix it", he disconnected the earth from the feed by cutting it right back into the insulation. It must have been leaking to the water pipe for ages. Obviously I fitted a new element, connected the earth and did proper bonding.
As a person who is interested in a career as an overhead linesman this is really useful thank you
Don't be shy. Apply to your local utility company or union. They'll probably welcome you.
Really informative thanks! They are changing from open conductors to ABC lines here in Estonia. We get 3 Phase direct to the house but only 20 Amp company fuse!
Twenty is plenty... IF the voltage is high enough! :) Plus, with 3-phase, you get root3 more power (1.732 times more) than flows in any single wire.
Basically an expensive, high quality "Scotchlock"?
Yep, you should see the ones they use to join cables in an underground pit. They are even more heavy duty because they are designed to operate when completely immersed in water.
Oh, I was thinking of the correct name, and yeah it is!
@@steampunkskunk3638 I'm guessing those are the ones we call "submarines"? You close them up, then pour in some kind of bituminous mass.
Thick, Black and ribbed.
Can't say I've clicked a video this quick in a while Clive. You had me in the first few words you saucy devil.
Great video. Interesting to see how our neighbors do it. In the USA we have 13,800v coming into a local transformer via two wires, hot and ground. This is then converted via a transformer to two phase 120/240v, 180 degrees out of phase from each other, and fed to one or up to 4 homes, dependent on the transformer size. Newer construction places all wiring underground. Generally only businesses get 3 phase power.
Very interesting video. My house had O/H two phases plus neutral via separate open conductors, just recently contractors came along and replaced them with a single twisted insulated wire similar but much lighter than the ones you showed. They did the whole street. However on the street poles they remain individual open wire (with, I think, 11kv running above on the same pole).
Put a magnet against your cable... the HVDC cable I have is for 500,000v (across country) and has a tensile steel centre (7 strands) with aluminium 'outer conductor' of about 50 strands in 4 concentric bands in my case. It's possible that the core strand of yours is also similarly constructed if scaled down somewhat...
500 kV? Is that AC or DC? There has been some really interesting work on HVDC in the last few years, including ways to tap off a few megawatts without breaching the thick HV insulation! (The basic idea is that they use a few turns of HV and MV cable to form an air-core transformer, operating at a few kHz.) I do wonder what else is different in DC work, where (for instance) galvanic corrosion does not have the benefit of AC to nearly balance the plating effects.
@@YodaWhat Apologies for the delay... Yup, 500,000 VDC. It's a long haul cable that runs 610 km / 380 mi... The losses from AC are too great for long distances though conversion from/to AC is not without cost...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Inter-Island
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium-conductor_steel-reinforced_cable
Copper work-hardens a surprising amount. Those vicious lookimg teeth would go all limp if you annealed them with a blowtorch.
My thought exactly less than 2 minutes in. Here's a copper cable that's been flexing about in the wind for years, of course it's not all shiny and malleable.
Could be a copper alloy like beryllium copper, or some variety of bronze.
@@COBARHORSE1, probably not beryllium. it is toxic. microwave ovens used to have beryllium parts in them only until a way was devised to eliminate it.
Overhead conductor is pretty rigid even when new. Ordinary soft ductile copper would sag way to much over time.
beryllium copper is widely used as spring contacts in many electrical fittings. Just dont angle-grind it and inhale the dust! Its way harder than copper but nearly as conductive.
We've got both cables here. The birds prefer the warm copper in the winter. I don't blame them.
I briefly worked on a transformer site where I learned about multiple cores and the skin effect. Interesting. They're also such peaceful places.
Excellent! Thanks for that, they have been introducing (what I know know to be) ABCs here in Cyprus and I wondered what they were about...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't copper soften (anneal), when it is heated? The stiffness (work hardening) would be caused by vibration and bending.
How much it softens depends on the temperature it gets heated to, AND how quickly it cools. Part of the hardening of old powerlines might be due to sudden surges of current, like when half the population runs to make tea via electric kettles during a commercial break in the show on telly... Followed a few minutes later by the load suddenly dropping way down, with rapid cooling of the wire. Repeat that a few thousand times and the effects might accumulate!
Trying some new algorithm keywords to grow the audience?
I was wearing headphones and when the first nut sheared, it made me jump. I've gotten my cardio for the day, thanks!
Excellent tear down of your neighbour’s new ABC power lines. Hope he now has power, again.
Some Welsh gentleman turned up, recently, and replaced my poles. I, of course, irritated them so much, they gave me various bits of cable, and connections. We apparently had aluminium and copper wire overhead cables here, and there are problems connecting the dissimilar metals together. We’re next to the sea, so plenty of salt water electrolyte to corrode an aluminium/copper connection. The chaps replaced the 4 wire with ABC. They were surprised we had copper overhead supply cable. Usually aluminium, they said, by the seaside.
Any-road-up, can post the sample set up to you, if you like, and you can natter about them in a subsequent video, or throw them in your bin.
If you’re interested in the samples, please reveal the method you use to allow the monkeys to send you stuff. I thank you.
Matt, North Kent coast.
Copper used in overhead cables is annealed to harden it, and as I'm sure you've noticed, it's a bugger to cut with normal electrical pliers.
The softer copper used in house wiring would stretch under the strain of it's own weight.
Thanks for the advice Clive, just going to buy some stock in Copper producers .....
Just don't keep your copper clappers in the closet 'cause Claude might cop them seeing he's such a klepto.
Yea ,I think the price just went up again, seems that somebody cut some down to examine it , and now the utility needs to purchase some replacement cables, something my wife would say I would do
Bit late for that though. Kinda like investing in Bitcoin.
That was fascinating, thanks Clive.
What a brilliant video.
I watched it right to the very end.
(Very rare, that.)
.
Where I live overhead lines are slowly disappearing which is probably happening everywhere else in the world as well, but there's a new law that basically means that the power companies have to be able to deliver electricity more or less fail-free regardless of weather conditions by 2029. Therefore everything pretty much has to be underground by then and slowly all the rural areas are going to be getting underground power lines. Probably explains why electricity is getting so damn expensive these days.
Not sure what's going to happen as by 2020 they should have half of the customers covered but as far as I know they are nowhere near that yet
Geologically, anywhere bedrock is shallow is going to be VERY expensive. I've lived in NY state in the Catskills for close to 20 years now while working in telecommunications. Back when I started, AERIAL construction for telecom cost about US$8000 per mile about 15 years ago material and labor for existing poles. No idea how much it's gone up since then, but I can't imagine the cost to put everything underground today, especially when you'd have to drill, hammer, or blast every foot of trench...
@@timothybarney7257 reliability of ug cable goes out the window, if NTL lay fibre. They'll just rip it out.
@@debonh3828 Granted, the cost I gave was for coax construction, not electrical, but the labor is the killer either way here. Underground would probably start at 10x the price in good conditions and only go up from there.
I only read "Thick, black ribbed " I clicked on Clive as fast as I could ! What a let down Power Lines???🤦♂️ 👍👍🤣🤣🤣
I really enjoyed that video Clive I remember years ago seeing the DNO engineers connecting cables from an underground cable to the 4 bare copper conductors using a tool that was powered from the truck batterys I'm guessing it was a powered joint crushing tool its only taken 40 years to find out better late than never Lol
Interesting video Clive I've seen these ABC cables on the otherside of town and did wonder how they were jointed also at my old house we had the 5 wire bare copper conductors they had a few repairs in them what I now know are barrel joints. Finally one time the electricity board were repairing a fault on the lines when the engineer got hold of the neutral link there was a flash and bang the neutral link had melted insulation must of been bloody hot 🔥 credit to them tho was soon repaired
Power lines.
Ribbed for Clive's pleasure
“Ribs all round”, good name for a restaurant
Huh. You might have the only non-innuendo rib-related comment.
Great present again.love the continuity at 17:30
super interesting! more of this sort of stuff please!
Gloves? Pfffft, you did all the handling with bear hands!
Tin plated to stop oxidation between copper and aluminum
Indeed
Noalox is the grease used in those connectors we also use silicone grease .We also have neutral supported cables ,ASCR a stainless steel center wire wrapped with aluminum wires .We use split bolt/Burndy connectors for connections .They use a PVC spreader to separate the conductors .
Love your videos Clive. The IDC inserts could perhaps be Beryllium Copper, we used to use that for welding electrodes on our flash butt welders, very nearly as conductive as pure copper but, with the right heat treat, as tough as a medium carbon steel.