This is a long delayed Tabblo that I owe Woody. I promised him in February of 2007 I would do a Tabblo about the unique powerline towers I saw in New Mexico. Finally, here it is! The biggest problem was the lack of access to this particular style of tower; the single-footed ones are only used in areas which are securely fenced off. In accessible areas, they used delta style four-footed towers.

The term "delta" refers to the triangular spacing of the powerlines from the Greek letter. [Note: technical jargon follows] By placing them in this arrangement, the magnetic fields generated by the AC current by each line will affect each of the other phases less and reduce "line loss". And the detectable magnetic field on the ground is less.

I found this one tower next to a road between House, NM and Taiban, NM near the intertie for a wind power project. This is a continuation of my Western Power Interconnection Tabblo.

The guy wires are one inch diameter steel cables. While the weight of the tower is borne by the foundation, the guy wires prevent the wind from setting the structure to vibrating or bending and breaking the thing off at the base.

Every one of the four guy wire bases were covered by these mesquite trees growing around them. Apparently disturbing the soil by pouring the anchor bases (They are set in concrete.) encouraged the trees to grow! But not for the foundation.

The foundation itself seems tiny for such a huge structure but it probably goes 20' or more into the ground. Note the serious fencing! There was no way I could get through that without using wire cutters! That is all barbed wire.

This is a long powerline, wending its way from Clovis, NM to Albuquerque, NM via Melrose and Santa Rosa, almost the whole width of the state, with at least two interties along the way. Most of the towers are of this style. Remember, this ties into the western grid and passes through some portion of New Mexico which is tied to the Texas grid (Clovis, for sure). There is no obvious line of demarcation for the two grids. It'll be where the local lines don't connect!

Using the picture to the right as an example, each pair of electrical wires is held by an insulator which is, in turn, suspended by two cables from the frame. By having two conductors for each phase, these powerlines can carry twice as much current. These conductors are probably about the same size as the guy wire cables. Those insulators are holding up a lot of weight of wire between the towers.

If you look carefully at the tower to the right, you will notice a large birds' nest near the top of this tower. Certainly a raptors' nest and probably an eagles. Some power companies even build platforms for large raptors to build on but this one (probably the US Gummint) doesn't.