Transmission Towers: Being a Reprint of a Paper Read by E. L. Gemmill, Chief Engineer of the Transmission Tower Department of Blaw-Knox Company, Pittsburgh, Before the Engineering Society of the Same Company (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Transmission Towers: Being a Reprint of a Paper Read by E. L. Gemmill, Chief Engineer of the Transmission Tower Department of Blaw-Knox Company, Pittsburgh, Before the Engineering Society of the Same Company

It is only within the last twenty-five to thirty years that it has been considered advisable to carry overhead electric power transmission lines on anything else than wood poles. But with the ever increasing tendency to concentrate power house units, and consequently to make fewer and larger installations, spaced farther apart, it has become necessary to transmit electrical energy over greater distances. This, in turn, has made it advisable to set a higher limit for the voltage at which the electrical energy will be conveyed from one point to another, in order to reduce to the lowest possible minimum the loss in transmis sion. The using of these higher voltages has, of course, brought in its train the necessity of making more careful provisions for supporting the conductors by means of which the electrical energy is transmitted from one point to another. Naturally, the first change made in the general scheme in vogue was to place the conductors farther apart, which necessitated the use of better cross arms for supporting them. At the same time it was also imperative that, with increased voltage, more clearance be allowed between the ground and the lowest conduc tor wires under the worst possible conditions of Operation. This could best be accomplished by making the supporting structures higher.

So long as the wires were kept only a short distance above the ground, the wood poles made an ideal support for them under ordinary conditions; but when higher supports had to be considered, transmis sion line engineers began looking about for other supporting structures which would lend themselves more readily wall the varying condi tions of service.

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