Saw this in Riverside, CA off 91 fwy widening, also seen lit at night. Sorry for bad pic, the cam seems to have focused on antenna as I was travieling along.
I've never seen this happen in Rhode Island but in Florida it happened to a durastar. The fiberglass housing came off the cast aluminum slipfitter. Hopefully if I go back there in a few years I'll be able to remember where i saw it and grab a pic of the new fixture.
It's because they're made from cheap fiberglass instead of good ol' cast aluminum. Thankfully there are no durapoos near me but in northwestern RI there are some durastars installed by the Pascoag Utiltiy District, which serves that area. They're supplied by NGrid feeds but PUD owns their own lines and lights and service their own electrical needs. There's a noticable difference in how they mount their primarys too. They currently use AEL 115s though they did use the Cooper OVH and OVZ a few years back. For flood lights I've seen many different styles.
Yeah, the fibreglass they use doesn't seem to hold up as well as cast aluminium over time and it's a good thing my utility stopped installing the Durastar after a brief trial in the early 2000s.
Oh and I noticed that my utility starting using the polymer insulators for the primaries instead of the old ceramic type.
Ceramic or porcelain? I'm not sure when they switched to polymer here but during pole renewals the existing insulators sometimes get transfered and other times not. I guess it depends on the lineman. The brown insulators almost always get repalced by polymer ones here though.
Wow. National Grid never leaves anything valuable laying around. Just the usual bird nest from a street light that they had to remove or the occasional retired utility pole, etc. They do sometimes leave metal poles on the freeways on the side of the road for months. They usually just push it a few yards from the road and leave it there so they can reinstall it at some point.
Oh and I noticed that my utility starting using the polymer insulators for the primaries instead of the old ceramic type.