I found an open electric box on the street with only 110 Volts. I'm curious what it is for.
It's been here since I've been here, I think, but was always sealed until tonight. It looks like maybe a car bumped it and broke the padlock tab off, so the side fell off and the box is open. The hinged door on top is still shut with one of those black plastic ties, with the little slide ratchet box if you know what I mean.
The whole box is dull green, only about 5 inches wide, 2 inches deep, and 40 inches high. When the side cover is off, I can see that there is a sheet metal wall going up the middle, and on each side of the wall is one heavy wire that goes from the physical earth, the soil, up to inside the still closed top section, with a junction connection in the middle, and one heavy wire that starts in the middle, a foot or two above the soil, at a similar junction connection (with only one wire) and goes up inside the top section. There is also a ground connector that seems to run left to right right through the wall in the middle. It has one or two ground wires in its screw holes.
Both of the two wire junctions are 110 volts AC wrt the ground connector, and they are zero wrt each other. The one wire junctions are zero wrt the ground. I tried every other combination of the four junctions and the ground and they are all zero.
What do you suppose this is? What's it for?
I thought there would be 220 in there somewhere. And that it was there to turn off the power to one of the buildings (which have 16 townhouses each). But not if it is only 110. I'm sure there's a transformer around there somehwere, probably closer than the one at the other end of my building, but I didn't see it and it's not very nearby.
I taped the cover back and called the power company and they're going to fix it tomorrow they said. She asked the right questions, and she said they would come tonight but the little kids around here aren't that aggressive. I guess if they have someone on duty but not working, they'll send him no matter what I said.