The Overhead Wiring
Supertram is powered through 12 electric substations and fed through 1.07 cm diameter overhead line equipment (OHLE) wire. The substations convert the 11 kV AC supply into 750 V DC supply into the overhead. The 12 substations are situated as follows:
- Blackburn Meadows
- Carbrook
- Nunnery Square
- Park Square
- Arbourthorne
- Gleadless Townend
- Birley
- Crystal Peaks, Ochre Dyke Lane
- Halfway, Eckington Way
- University, Brook Hill
- Langsett Road, Capel Street
- Middlewood
The overhead line equipment depends on the location. If the tracks are close together, central poles with 'steady' arms on each side are used. If the tracks are further apart, poles on either side with span wire are used. With aesthetics in mind a minimum number of traction poles are used and whenever possible the wire is anchored onto neighbouring buildings. Supertram, Sheffield City Council and landlords were in talks to try and hide anchor points as much as possible and blend them into the structures.
The contact wires are twin cadmium copper ones, twin wires being necessary because of the high installed power rating of the trams (1 megawatt). The regenerative braking on the tram feeds current back into the wires.
Read more about this topic: Sheffield Supertram, Technical Data
Famous quotes containing the word overhead:
“There’s something wonderfully exciting about the quiet sing song of an aeroplane overhead with all the guns in creation lighting out at it, and searchlights feeling their way across the sky like antennae, and the earth shaking snort of the bombs and the whimper of shrapnel pieces when they come down to patter on the roof.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)