Hi Clive. Love the channel! I work in the electricity utility industry (South East DNO), looking after the Distribution assets so have had a lot of experience with ABC and other types of LV OHL. This video is therefore right up my alley! ABC has been extensively used, and we now use it for all LV OHL refurb or reinforcement jobs (first preference being 'undergrounding' to remove the risks associated with OHL). The current carrying ability of 4-wire ABC is generally better than open wire, there's a lot less volt drop. We also find it's more resilient to fallen trees and will often bounce right back into position after fallen trees are cut away from the lines. There are also the improved safety aspects with third parties (both humans and animals) plus less likelihood of fun sparking and arcing with clashing conductors in windy weather.

The section of copper conductor you have is known in the industry as 0.1 (point one) it is 70mm^2 in cross sectional area. You're right about the wire arrangements being neutral at the bottom, phases above, Starting at the bottom going up is neutral, L3(Grey/Blue), L2(Black/Yellow), L1(Brown/Red), Switch wire for street lighting. In the midlands the switch wire is obsolete and disconnected, but left up due to the risks involved removing it as most "open wire" lines do not have insulation on the phases/neutral and can only be achieved during a shutdown. Street lamps used to be connected to the neutral and switch wire and the switch wire was controlled by a time clock mounted to the pole which had to be periodically adjusted as to come on when the sun started to set/rise. Now a days each street lamp has a light sensor mounted on the top of the lamp and a constant live feed into the street light, each street light now determines its self when to come on, thus making the switch wire obsolete. The theory behind neutral on the bottom is for safety in the event of something long and conductive coming into contact with the power line (such as a scaffolder carrying tubes upright) as they would most likely contact the neutral first before any of the phases directing the current to neutral rather than down the object grounding through a person. however this has the flaw that if something like a lorry is to clash only the neutral and bring it down the electricity consumers have no neutral and in a PME property, they will also have no earth. A downed neutral becomes live due to the imbalanced neutral current trying to return to earth. To try and mitigate this risk an earth stake is attached periodically down poles and connected to the neutral. On old domestic open wire services you usually find the phase on the bottom and the neutral on top, in this case the property still has a neutral/earth and power is cut off from the property, If the property loses its neutral/earth it will make all earth bonded surfaces live as the phase current has no return path. thus will find a return path through an unsuspecting person when they touch a metal sink... ABC is designed as a fully water tight system and comes in 4 flavors, 35mm^2, 50mm^2, 95mm^2 and 120mm^2. and in single or three phase bundles. ive not seen a 5 wire bundle before with a smaller switch wire so i can only assume this was wrapped into the bundle? The ABC you have is a section of 95mm^2 three phase, with a 50mm^2 phase wrapped into the bundle as a switch wire... The insulation on ABC is XLPE (Cross-linked polyethylene) with UV mitigation as to not deteriorate in the sun. Their are a range of connectors, lugs and caps for the ABC system to maintain its water tightness. The reason for keeping the aluminium watertight is unlike copper which oxides and the oxide film protects and does not flake off, Aluminium oxide peels away nicely rusting the conductors much like if they where made of iron/steel. The connector you used on the ABC is known as an IPC (Insulation piercing connector), It is used for connecting ABC to ABC and Isn't rated for connecting ABC to Copper meter tailing like you did. These IPC's are range taking and come in a few different sizes so you can connect 95mm^2 ABC to 35mm^2 ABC or 35 to 35... or 120 to 50.... The connection teeth/plates inside are tinned copper as these provide a metal harder than aluminum so they bite into, but also conduct well, The reasons for the tinning is to mitigate the effects of copper salts attacking and corroding aluminium at an accelerated rate. The reason for the shape of teeth, 2 larger and 2 smaller teeth are for load taking when these connectors are put on live, The arc that occurs burns the teeth away so in an attempt to mitigate this these connectors have sacrificial teeth to take the loading and good teeth to make a good connection. In harsh load pick up (50+ amps) its easy to burn the connection completely up before the torque bolts sheer. Most linesman will have found this out the hard way by having the whole connection catch fire while still in their hand. Their are "transitional Joints" which have teeth one side to accommodate ABC and tinned copper plates the other side to connect onto bare wires, the plates simply press down onto each side of the bare conductor. Their are also Lugs designed specifically for ABC which have a watertight plastic jacket to keep water away from the conductor. As well as "mid spans" which are butt connectors designed to also take the tension in case of sheered conductors, these are also in a plastic jacket to keep water out.

I saw "Thick black ribbed" and wondered what the hell Clive had bought from Ebay *now* :P

Speaking as a "light current" electrical engineer, I think this is your most brilliant video ever. This is the stuff they never show us at University!

I've always wondered what the bare wires look like close up, so many thanks for satisfying my curiosity! Also for taking the crimp off afterwards to see what it did to the wire, very interesting.

Hi Clive i work in the distribution industry and the Biggest problem we have with ABC connectors is when you go to tap a service on during on load conditions it seems to arc and breakdown but not usually to the point where its immediately noticeable. Usually a few weeks or even months go by then you start to have problems. To get round this we always use 2 connects when tapping services on live. And always 2 connectors for the neutral. Thanks, Curtis

How long did it take for your neighbors to get their power back? ;->

"Saves you guys having to steal a cherry picker and go up and play with live wires." Yeah. Thanks, I guess.

Haven't noticed 20 minute pass by. Interesting topic, good voice, actual interest in topic by Clive that makes you follow his path of thought real fun.

My day started with thick black ribbed overhead power. Thanks big bear Clive!

Hey Clive! I'm a power lineman in the US and we use the ABC cable (we call it "overhead triplex" extensively for residential and commercial electrical service. We even have a 4 conductor type for 3 phase service, called "quadplex". Our ABC is a bit different than over there, in that the neutral conductor is always bare and serves as support for the entire bundle.

Can't say how many times I've looked up at these cables in the UK and wondered about their construction and operation. So thanks Clive for a very informative video.

Im a lineman apprentice in Norway and i have used those clamps in -26 c so they work in cold weather.

You've reminded me of the "bee sting" connectors we used to use to tap into thick Ethernet coax back in the 1990's... It would be fun to find some unused parts and show the modern world where we came from...

I've learned so much from you since I discovered this channel!

We use a fibreglass stirrup and a thyssenkrupp plastic insulated metal cable tie. We don't tend to use vertical orientations with LV - it takes up too much space on the pole. Makes it a hand-operation to install it. Horizontal is also great for galloping cables - they tend to move together - especially when we add stirrups. We use the same kind of ID clamps - we use cabac (Australia). The gel is not really needed for waterproofing - it's used to prevent chemical interactions between the aluminium and the copper. These clamps are absolutely perfect in any non-tension installation. We have about 1.2 million of them in our network and I've only ever seen 20 failures over my 10 years working in the industry - typically because installers have loaded the connector up incorrectly

During one uni summer I worked in a magnet factory. My boss was a solid Physics grad. They used Al conductors when it suited but he explained TBF there's no straight advantage from a Physics perspective (magnets were typ 220V dc): it's all economics. I was shown a scrap magnet recovered by the police after thieving. They'd angle-ground into the core, seen Al, and buggered off. Like I say, it's all economics.

Holy shit, how much innuendo can one actually cram into a vid about wires! 😂 by this point i'm in tears! @8:35

you have a wonderful collection of some of the most annoyingly unique and useful looking tools around, sir.

I've been in interested in electronics my whole life so I've absorbed some information there, and now here on KZfaq with you I'm learning quite a lot about electrical systems. Thank you!

Thanks Clive. Thanks to the nice Manx Beard Club member who kindly lent Clive the subject of this video.

I work in subs but in training was told that the neutral is at the bottom because if you loose one of the phase conductors its more likely to short with the neutral and active the protection rather than risk people coming into contact with a fallen conductor. Also I believe you can get some Arial cables with sperate neutral and earth. But it does look like a street lighting circuit.

Hi Clive, we have changed over now to ABC "The better cable" despite missing out on Neighbour's navigating them with long aluminium ladders & blue flashes, lights flickering on dark stormy nights. The wind whistling around the new cable drives me nuts. "First signs of dementia?" Bring back the old. Curb the population through natural selection & I get a reason to buy a big UPS unit ;-) love your channel.

A friend's dad was a chartered engineer. As a student I got to see his mates at work on a call out. They were repairing stuff under the street. I think it was 1890's cable that was still good. I know 1890's cable was still in use in the 1980's.

It is really spooky just how similar the cable and termination methods are for electrical distribution and telecoms termination. The 20 or 50 pair overhead cables that supply phone service are referred to as aerial cables. They have a ribbed steel wire on the outside with an internal grease filled bundle of cables wrapped in 10's. The steel wire in the phone cables are only there to support the cable but they are supposed to be earthed on the E side onwards (E side means from exchange) I was called out by the fire brigade from our emergency centre once. A lorry had hit the telephone pole or stick as we call them and had pulverised the pole ! Not an easy thing to do and it did cut the lorry cab in two. This was at a junction with the pole on a small island in the middle. The bottom part of the pole was gone but 3/4 of the pole was still there suspended from the 50 pair cable. A very strange sight that's for sure ! The cables that go from the junction box (or DP - Distribution point) to the house has two twisted pairs for service and three steel support wires to well support the cable. It is amazing just how strong they are. The cable is attached to the customers house with an expanding bolt that has an eye on the end. It brought back memories watching you wrap on that separator as the phone cable at both ends uses a very similar method. We used a formed steel wire in the same shape as the seperator you have there but it also has a powder like rough service to increase the friction. The wire is supposed to be formed round the cable and not the other way round as you get failure points if you do that (though most engineers do as it is far easier). This can split the outer coating of the line cable and allow water ingress that eventually rots the cable. These clamps are amazingly strong and I have actually seen where a very high lorry has hit the cable the brick has been pulled out the wall. It will rip a soffit of the front of a house easily so that's why expanding bolts into the brick are used. As you would imagine the rules around climbing a "joint pole" that has ABC cables on it to are very strict. A 1.5M separation has to be kept and the pole must be accessed using fibreglass ladders that weigh a damn ton have to be used, the pole must be marked with an "E" red plate and its a two man working job so control have to raise an assist job so you end up waiting hours for another engineer and then get a bollocking for your jobs per day but I wont get into the politics ! In order to be authorized to climb a joint services pole you have to complete an "overhead" course, written test and physical exam. Poles that have or are adjacent to 11KV services have to be accessed by a cherry picker. I just wonder if the IDC termination methods were copied from the post office (who used to own the network years ago) or if it was the other way round as the termination methods are very similar. We even used grease filled jelly crimps to connect wires together overhead, underground and at the main cabinets and the cable retention methods are very similar. We are supposed to cable from blue, orange, green, brown slate in that order and the linesman on the grid use for example blue phase on the first house, yellow on the second and red on the third to balance the load. Strange how two different services have so much in common. As a PTO I had to go and complete a linesman course funnily enough in Glasgow. A very interesting video and I am sure it will be of great interest to people. Great work as always my friend.... Keep it up and if you managed to read all of this you get a "waffle resistant" certification ........... :-D

You alluded to it at the end of the video, but the aluminium thing isn't just cost - when the wire is hanging under its own weight aluminium does have the advantage due to its higher strength at a given resistance or weight, ( matched for either, the aluminium will be superior in the third by a factor of two) It is a little trickier to work with - any oxidation and it forms an almost completely insulating layer, and it will corrode on contact with copper . that's what the coating on the teeth is for - probably tin or zinc , nickel would be magnetic. That's why the connectors are much more heavily engineered than the copper- most of the historical problems with aluminium wiring were due to the connection points. That and the fact that older alloys would sag over time, bit that has been eliminated recently

This bundle wire is named AsXSn here in Poland and commonly used for low-voltage (ie 400/230VAC) overhead grids which are very common also in urban areas. All of the conductors are marked with a number of ribs too - neutral has none. I haven't worked with these kinds of wire though, though I'm pretty experienced with indoor domestic wiring. Always loving to learn something new about electrical engineering.

Yep, linesman and distribution designer here. The LV abc is pretty good if holes are sealed with mastic, expecially around the ocean. Depending on the exact accessories it can be problematic to phase out between transformers. Certain birds like to chew on the abc insulation and short it out mid span. Abc is much heavier and can be easily over stretched during installation. We see internal corrosion (meters of it turn to powder) if the crimps aren’t greased. But we use IPC (internal piercing clamps) that maintain the insulation by pushing little teeth though. Good for 400A That copper is 7/0.80

I work at an electrical utility, we have phased out the street light switch wire and moved to PE cell lamps. Switch wires were traditionally used with timers when PE cell tech wasn't available. Having the lamp directly powered from the mains and self switching has many benifits. Less conductor to maintain, less safety issues with conductors that are only periodically live, easier fault finding, more reliable street lighting and less weight/wind load on the structures making them cheaper to build and replace. That's another reason aluminium is used instead of copper these days, it's cheaper and lighter and as you mentioned not as desirable for scrap.

In the US we been using aluminium ABC type overhead lines for service feeds to homes and buildings for years. We use galvanized steel for the high voltage primary conductors. The very old lines were copper but most of that has been phased out and replaced with the galvanized wire. In fact I have a job lined up where I have to run some of this wire in a buried conduit as a supply for a guest house.. The grease is used to stave off corrosion due to the different metals used in the field (copper, aluminium, galvanized steel) and weather / environment effects on said metals. I use the same grease in circuit breaker panels on the main conductor lugs, so they do not corrode over time and it helps with the tightening of the lugs.. Our street lighting in urban areas is 277 volts mainly especially the non aerial lines (buried). Some are 120 or 230 volts but those are private property lights sold by the power company usually. Interesting to note on 277 volts is that many commercial and industrial buildings here run 277 for building lighting..

Oh wow, the bolts designed to shear is a very cool concept!

When I was a child in the 1970s the migrating swallows, swifts and house martins used to congregate on the 3 phase power supply that ran up the road overhead. The lines were black with them for the quarter mile to the underpass for a week or too before they upped and offed to Africa for the winter. Nowadays there are less birds, so the single bundled cable the electricity supply company installed last year suits the situation. Sadly.

when your crazy Scottish neighbour hacks down the power lines outside so he could have a better look at the bench

Would you be able to get some 11kV, 132kV or 230kV+ cable to show us at all? It's not often you get to see the steel cables up close and how they fit into the ceramic explosive fuses.

Great video Clive, why on earth people have given this thumbs down beats me, maybe a bunch of copper thieves looking for how they can carry out their dastardly deeds without frying themselves rather than do something helpful.

I just completed a retirement community where I had to use over 600+ of those taps on SER cables for mains entrance pass-throughs to each individual unit. I stripped the insulation just inside each tap for a better connection. Added Nolox to each and tightened the tap down.

You should feature some XPLE cable , this is used for carrying the primary feeds underground. The splicing/termination requirements are much more involved as you have to maintain the dielectric integrity of the connection.

Always something interesting on Big Clive. That’s a very “short” circuit you have there, the cable is red most likely just years of oxide, arial conductors are hard drawn so they are always stiff as honeymoon wedding tackle, if they were soft drawn (annealed), they would stretch under the tension when they are being strung. ABC is popping up everywhere here in Aus, I must admit it looks neater than multiple bare conductors, but it suffers from much higher capacitive losses and is generally aluminium, so not as good of a conductor either, but it has the advantage of being black and ribbed, thanks for another great video.

Hallo Big Clive, truly enjoy your show. I would bet money that the silver colored coating of the copper bridging plates is in fact silver. Silver oxide is conductive, unlike aluminum or copper, helping ensure a good contact. Most controller contacts are also coated/plated with a commercial silver to ensure they stay conductive over the life of the contacts. The copper is not pure, but an alloy to increase its hardness, at the cost of ductility. Keep up the good work!

This vid touches on why I now disassociate myself with the regs. After privatisation they no longer install proper SNE (TNS) earth. So with only PME (TNCS, although TNCS is not exactly PME) they have with a single stroke of the pen made every single new supply via overhead cables more dangerous across the nation. Twice I have personally seen the effects of the loss of the neutral to this earthing system but it's now your (or your electricians) responsibility to supply you with the most important conductor in your home. Even then if you have your own earthstake you would hardly want it used as a neutral under such conditions............another awesome vid, thanks Clive.....

“Ribbed for your protection.” Not quite the familiar phrase.

This was awesome video Clive, thank you!! I would say those teeth are likely cupro nickel or aluminum bronze and then tin coated. Very high conductivity and far harder than copper to made a good bite without deforming.

Really informative thanks! They are changing from open conductors to ABC lines here in Estonia. We get 3 Phase direct to the house but only 20 Amp company fuse!

In school/college I was told they use aluminium in high voltage over head cables because. whilst it has higher resistivity than copper by volume/area it has lower resistivity by weight and so it makes sense to use steel cored aluminium conductors for that purpose.

clive you're scaring me questioning whether or not you should do things in this video haha "should I test it to see if there's a connection?" "Should I take it back apart to see how it looks?" YES YES YES!!! hahaha

In Kanukistan in the seventies we also had high copper prices and switched temporarily to aluminum for new home construction. Trouble began when people started changing switches and outlets years later and home centers only had copper compatible devices by then. This caused fires due to dissimilar metals causing a voltage drop and therefor heat. The point being, that coating on the hardened copper connector may be for copper to aluminum transition.

As a person who is interested in a career as an overhead linesman this is really useful thank you

Those shear nuts are a clever solution for getting the right torque without a torque wrench and someone who cares to use it. Nice.

Thick, Black and ribbed. Can't say I've clicked a video this quick in a while Clive. You had me in the first few words you saucy devil.

Ah good old penatrox. It's a grease we use on bi-metallic Kearney's helps keep the electrolysis away when tapping aluminum conductors to copper.

I was wearing headphones and when the first nut sheared, it made me jump. I've gotten my cardio for the day, thanks!

We've got both cables here. The birds prefer the warm copper in the winter. I don't blame them. I briefly worked on a transformer site where I learned about multiple cores and the skin effect. Interesting. They're also such peaceful places.

Seeing it on the bench, my first thought was "Someones power is out tonight..." 🤣

In Denmark the neutral used to be on top, I believe to act as a lighting rod, as the neutral is connected to the ground. But now almost all low tension distribution (230/400v) is in the ground. (No rock/cliff in Denmark)

Love your channel, I would bet the plating on the copper bars that bite the wire is pure silver. Pure silver has been used in electrical contractors for quite a long time.

I'm going up the pole anyway. Your videos simply cause greater interest. Great work.

scene nb1 : Clive looking for a chery picker. scène nb 2 : clive has found a chery picker.

As far as ABC stretch, ther is a run just down the street that has had a tree come down on it, and has been running almost a month sitting about 5 meters lower than normal without any loss of service

Here in Australia they are upgrading many lines in rural areas to the ABC stuff. Its less likely to start a fire if a tree branch falls on the lines or if a storm brings the pole down.

Really interesting. Thanks for taking the time. Great presentation style too

I remember long ago, they were demolishing a whole street (including the roads) by me, and they tore up all the pre war power cables. We found(!) large pieces of it, this was useful as when you're 15 money is hard to come by. Steel outer sheath twisted on, a black tar cloth(?) Beneath that, lead with wax paper underneath and the beautiful copper, all shiny... 14p a kilo should give you a guess how many decades ago it was...

That's magnesium plated copper for dieletric connections between copper and aluminum or you get eletrolyis between the disimilar metal. Galvanic chart.

"Thick, black ribbed" and "Rigid". Less than two minutes into the video, and you're already excelling yourself, with the euphemisms. 😁

It's actually Aerial Bundled Conductor & there is also an 11kV version called IUC or Insulated Unscreened Conductor,here in Australia we use it extensively due to the catastrophic bushfires we endure.

When I worked for Western Electric as an installer in central offices (telephone switches), I could get a couple extra inches out of a piece of wire by wrapping it one turn around a screwdriver handle and running it up and down a few feet of tight wire. That was soft stuff.

I expected the sound of a chain saw starting when you were pointing out the pole and wires at the beginning. Thanks for the vid and info - more interesting, but irrelevant knowledge for me!

Great video. Interesting to see how our neighbors do it. In the USA we have 13,800v coming into a local transformer via two wires, hot and ground. This is then converted via a transformer to two phase 120/240v, 180 degrees out of phase from each other, and fed to one or up to 4 homes, dependent on the transformer size. Newer construction places all wiring underground. Generally only businesses get 3 phase power.

Abc is generally reliable but the ipc sometimes don't make a decent connection. Due to this, its our companies policy to put 2 on the neutral connection. We have had more issues with the multiple service termination boxes failing. All in all a very good system that seems more reliable than the open wire especially in adverse weather and with vegetation issues. I'm an EHV Engineer for a DNO (soon to be a DSO) so lete know if you need any more info on anything.

The copper grips are probably plated to prevent galvanic corrosion between the alluminium and copper. The plating is probably tin.

"Firrrrrm and rrrribbed" I love scottish.

i was so excited when you took them apart. i love that kind of thing for some reason.

Impressed with the self-sheering bolt head caps :)

I lived in an area where the underground mains were put in just as aluminium became popular. Unfortunately, the insulation used was not robust enough to deal with the many sharp flints in the ground, so it gets pierced and water leaks in and corrodes the conductor. Of course, the electric company is unwilling to replace the whole thing, so instead they patch it constantly

The metal bits with the teeth are likely made from phosphor bronze. It is very commonly used in the power industry.

The main reason that bare stuff is so stiff is because it's not annealed after drawing, unlike most copper wires. That's to keep it strong and stable in tension so it doesn't sag.

Thanks Clive, now I can sound knowledgeable when Western Electric come round to change over the old copper in my driveway to ABC after I complained they are so low my van aerial would touch if I drove underneath!

Hi all, I once reported my overhead cables to the electricity board, I could see the lower neutral copper cable had lost a few strands, and looked like it was holding on with one strand. I took a zoomed photograph for them to look at when they arrived. They disconnected my supply and took the old cables down, that last strand snapped like a dry twig. They replaced the feed with Aluminium twisted pair. I told my neighbour what they did and he phoned them and asked for new cables too, as his had been there as long as mine had. They replaced his too.

Basically an expensive, high quality "Scotchlock"?

Love your videos Clive. The IDC inserts could perhaps be Beryllium Copper, we used to use that for welding electrodes on our flash butt welders, very nearly as conductive as pure copper but, with the right heat treat, as tough as a medium carbon steel.

So true about crazy copper prices. I thwarted someone trying to nick off with the rooftop copper spouting from my old school one night.

I only read "Thick, black ribbed " I clicked on Clive as fast as I could ! What a let down Power Lines???🤦‍♂️ 👍👍🤣🤣🤣

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't copper soften (anneal), when it is heated? The stiffness (work hardening) would be caused by vibration and bending.

I worked for UK's founding telecomms company (previously post office). Low voltage low current but lots of it everywhere. Reliability was pretty good in my day. If things were done correctly the kit was good enough to withstand quite extreme weather. You can't beat nature but most of the kit was good for 20 or more years. Silicone grease and IDC connectors are pretty efficient if you use them in the right way. Used inappropriately they become destructive. Wind and ice is bad, but the worst was rain water. If you deviate from the instructions it's surprising how quickly water gets in, and then copper corrodes and dissolves in no time.

I've noticed that the overhead lines in the villages near me have the neutral staked down to ground , with a ground wire run down the pole to the earth stake below. Almost irrelevant on new builds now considering the RCD's installed as main switches. The poles were marked with a disc with the standard earth symbol on it and another label with TN-C-S engraved on it. Had a few run in with NICIEC inspectors as they could never understand why the houses didn't have their own earth stake installed, even though it was always listed in the exceptions section!

Power lines. Ribbed for Clive's pleasure

Where I live overhead lines are slowly disappearing which is probably happening everywhere else in the world as well, but there's a new law that basically means that the power companies have to be able to deliver electricity more or less fail-free regardless of weather conditions by 2029. Therefore everything pretty much has to be underground by then and slowly all the rural areas are going to be getting underground power lines. Probably explains why electricity is getting so damn expensive these days. Not sure what's going to happen as by 2020 they should have half of the customers covered but as far as I know they are nowhere near that yet

Is that your own personal pronunciation of "grease" or have I just never heard a Scotsman say it before? Greez. Greeeeezzzz. Love it. Rhymes with ease, and avoids any confusion with Greece. I'm gonna start using it.

The US standard in residential areas is single, split phase. 240VAC @ 60Hz across the mains and 120VAC main to neutral. 3 phase is common in industrial areas and possibly some agricultural areas. That ABC cable looks a lot like something we call MHF (mobile home feeder). It is approved for branch circuit in residential application. When used inside buildings it must installed inside conduit, but it can be direct buried. I don't know at aerial applications. It is much less expensive than copper even though large conductors must must for the same current.

Put a magnet against your cable... the HVDC cable I have is for 500,000v (across country) and has a tensile steel centre (7 strands) with aluminium 'outer conductor' of about 50 strands in 4 concentric bands in my case. It's possible that the core strand of yours is also similarly constructed if scaled down somewhat...

Copper work-hardens a surprising amount. Those vicious lookimg teeth would go all limp if you annealed them with a blowtorch.

Excellent tear down of your neighbour’s new ABC power lines. Hope he now has power, again. Some Welsh gentleman turned up, recently, and replaced my poles. I, of course, irritated them so much, they gave me various bits of cable, and connections. We apparently had aluminium and copper wire overhead cables here, and there are problems connecting the dissimilar metals together. We’re next to the sea, so plenty of salt water electrolyte to corrode an aluminium/copper connection. The chaps replaced the 4 wire with ABC. They were surprised we had copper overhead supply cable. Usually aluminium, they said, by the seaside. Any-road-up, can post the sample set up to you, if you like, and you can natter about them in a subsequent video, or throw them in your bin. If you’re interested in the samples, please reveal the method you use to allow the monkeys to send you stuff. I thank you. Matt, North Kent coast.

ABC is used here in Australia as well, only two complaints I've heard is that it's heavy to manually string if you are stringing through hilly terrain and don't have access for large vehicles to help, outer suburban hills face areas. Second complaint which is probably Australia specific is fire rating, we can get a lot of 'scrub' fires here, with open conductors a hot fast moving scrub fire can move straight under the cables with little to no damage. With ABC once the sheath is damaged the entire cable needs to be replaced. Conversely a good number of our scrub fires were caused by open conductors clashing and dropping hot copper into the tinder dry scrub during windy conditions.

Copper used in overhead cables is annealed to harden it, and as I'm sure you've noticed, it's a bugger to cut with normal electrical pliers. The softer copper used in house wiring would stretch under the strain of it's own weight.

Thanks for the advice Clive, just going to buy some stock in Copper producers .....

I really enjoyed that video Clive I remember years ago seeing the DNO engineers connecting cables from an underground cable to the 4 bare copper conductors using a tool that was powered from the truck batterys I'm guessing it was a powered joint crushing tool its only taken 40 years to find out better late than never Lol

i love clives vids... his voice is so calming yet he looks like a death metal singer lol

“Ribs all round”, good name for a restaurant

Trying some new algorithm keywords to grow the audience?

Noalox is the grease used in those connectors we also use silicone grease .We also have neutral supported cables ,ASCR a stainless steel center wire wrapped with aluminum wires .We use split bolt/Burndy connectors for connections .They use a PVC spreader to separate the conductors .

They use the same type of cable in my area for overhead lines. A few years ago we had a tree fall on a line directly across the street and break the pole. All we seen was a power flicker but I still cut the main breaker to be safe. At no point during repairs to the pole did they disconnect the line. They first tightened the tensioners on the adjacent poles to lift the line back into place. Installed a new pole directly beside the old one. Transferred everything over and took down the old pole. It was remarkable how fast it all went.