HV Switches

You've probably seen high-voltage power lines and power substations, but have you ever wondered what the high-voltage switches look like, and how they work? A friend who is a power systems engineer provided these two videos, showing the operation of high-voltage switches. I've linked to copies on Google Video to reduce the bandwidth load on my server.

345kV switch opening on a cloudy day
500 kV switch opening — If you listen closely at the end of this clip, you can hear an engineer offering a summary of the situation using terse engineering terminology.

Last updated September 18, 2006


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