Is that a giant tarp holding concrete together?
ITS A TARP?
it was a personnel net, capable of holding 17,400lbs (plus a safety factor of 5). The netting prevented the concrete from falling 40ft and hitting the oil filled/insulated lines which would have made a nasty mess and caused a major outage if the lines weren’t taken out in advance.
the 345kV lines are in the Lewiston Dam at the NYPA Hydro Electric Plant. These are the lines that cross into Canada over the Gorge by Devils Hole.
It pretty much took an act of congress to get these lines turned off for the emergency work at a cost of $250,000/hr of lost revenue.
yeah to repair that after concrete hit it could be days to weeks worth of work, plus nobody i know stocks either the potheads or cable rated to 345kv lol. Good luck finding guys qualified to work it also. The cost of the outage on those lines is just another reason companies like national grid have started liveline barehanding and hot sticking transmission voltages so they wont have to take an outage on the line to repair and maintain it. In barehanding you actually become energized to the same potential as the line (electrically bonded to the line wearing a conductive suit) so you can work on it directly instead of using long cumbersome fiberglass sticks to isolate you from the line. Sounds like fun eh