And more realistically:
From here: https://www.quora.com/What-is-this-device-seen-on-a-municipal-powerline
“It’s an “overhead fault indicator.” It’s sort of the opposite of what Steve Schafer guessed: it lights up when an excessive current flows in the line. It is used to help the power company troubleshoot faults (short circuits to ground or from one power line to another) in a power system. Protective relays in the distribution system shut off the power when a fault occurs, but it isn’t always obvious where the fault occurred, and that’s where these gadgets come into play.
The more advanced ones have colored lights to indicate different kinds of faults, and some have radio transmitters to send fault information to the power company.”
Good find!
I do believe KrisKringle has won the internet for a day.
That looks like the one, and the one Ray76 linked looks like the same model. You can’t see it well in my shots, bad lighting, but I can see the SEL inside a rectangle on the face of it and the 3 circles, which I’m assuming are the LEDs.
Thanks for the info and the laughs, some of these posts were pretty humorous.
OK know where can I get me one of those cool metal hats???
Crimaneeeeee .. we was having fun til you posted this .. oh well .. time to hit the sack anyway.
So, not a flux capacitor but a flux inductor coil with a fault indicator.
party pooper. Stuff was getting good !
Can't be. It's not on a power conductor. That's a steel rope and they are not used for power. It might measure transient power from the conductors around it or, now that I think of it, it might measure power loss through the cable to ground.
I believe you are right, I had already commented something similar before I read your post.