Those insulators aren't THAT old, and also they do look big, what is the voltage of these lines?

Did these lines like get lowered down in voltage or something?

They are old Ian, trust me. I have worked with them in the past. The ones I worked on are from the 50's to give you an idea.

As for the voltage, these are more than likely 13.8 kv since that is the most popular voltage used in the northeast but there is a stray chane that these are 23kv which is the second most popular.

I know of lots of power lines from the 50's. Especially high voltage ones. I am not sure when they stopped using lattice towers and started using the newer hollow poles, but it was long ago when they stopped using lattice towers. Probably 60's or 70's when they stopped. But Lattice towers are still very common here.

For Xcel energy they have higher voltage primary lines then the plains part, I am not sure why. I think the plains has the 13 KV lines (or somewhere close to that) While the mountains uses 23 KV lines, I am not sure. But the insulators in the mountains on primary lines are bigger, they are like that you see on this picture (two of those bigger disc insulators) Or different, some have three of the smaller disc insulators, and the polymer insulators are bigger and the tie tops are bigger too.

You can see that NGrid modernized the poles on the street in the background, as they use the hendrix construction lines. I was helping in a community service project (I am a boy scout) here, cleaning out the right-hand side of the pic. There are ditches behind the fence that Goodwill Industries of Rhode Island (similar to a salvation army) that carry storm water out of the parking lot. Goodwill requested the Providence Public Works to put in storm drain in the street, as there are none at all but Providence insists that Goodwill OWNS this street!!! That's crazy since there are other businesses on that road too. The road is indeed owned by the city because it has a name, Houghton Street .

These are all Cree LEDs now, as Providence just wrapped up their citywide LED conversion. Maybe sometime I'll drive around and look for HPS missouts. Never thought I'd say THAT!