In rural areas I often see on power poles these things that look like small transformers, which are not near any buildings. They are on the primary lines, which I understand are generally around 15KV. These look similar to the transformers used by homes and buisnesses, except they are smaller, particularly smaller in diameter. They only have two insulators on the top. They hang on a pole. The wire coming to that pole enters one of the insulators, the wire leaving that pole (going to the next pole) is on the other insulator. In other words they are in series with the wires and on the HOT side. The ground wire (lower on the pole) is not affected at these poles, it just continues on.
What are these things for? What do they do?
I should mention that I have seen THREE of them on poles that furnish
3phase power (4 wires with the ground). Each of the 3 wires goes to one of these things.Thanks