is there any street lighting engineers here

Personally I never liked splicing underground. When the wires are pulled up to the poles and then spliced in the pole, I believe those connections will last better. I have done it the other way, they still work, just did not like the idea.

I only have a small amount of experience in this but I'd say that the loop-in, loop-out should have a higher reliability and lower lifecycle cost due to the fact that underground joints do create a weak point which can (and does) fail later in the life of the cable system.

yes I also agree, however cable jointing has become more advanced than it was a few years ago, with some very sturdy jointing kits availible. Also, there is a possibility of course, that on long runs of cable (along a highway for example) the main cable will be of a large CSA (e.g. 120mmsq) providing a low impedance earth loop impedance return path and therefore a relatively high fault current.

The joint spur cable into the lighting column will only need to be of small CSA.

The concern is that should an earth fault occur in the column, the spur cable would carry the burden of the fault current and could overheat or completely fail.

Of course, it would not be possible to use the same CSA as the main cable run because it would be impossible to terminate such a large conductor into the column. the answer would be to add fuse or circuit breaker protection to the smaller cable, but joints do not allow this facility.

In the UK it is common to use loop-in / loop-out wiring. what is the norm in other countries??

Any comments welcomed, as i am putting a project proposal together soon.

Presumably this means a column felled by a car is likely to disable a whole line of lamps. This is not what I normally observe, i.e. a felled column does not normally disable the rest of the lamps.

I've seen motorway lighting in the UK where the joint spur is in a ground inspection chamber some ~6' from the base of each column. In that strech, a lorry felled around 5 columns which are still missing, but the line of lamps either side is still working fine.

Have to disagree, loop in loop out is usually only on private cables. UK lighting is by 4mm hybrid cable jointed to the nearest LV main.

No one's mentioned 'breakaway' submersible fuseholders yet, like

--s falke

On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 10:32:11 -0800, s falke wrote (in message ):

Hi, Scott, Do these allow for safe physical disconnect in the event of a failure of the structure (ie, vehicle collision)? Is that what "breakaway" means?