Power towers add fiber optic line

Electric towers used by Eversource for power transmission have been getting an upgrade in recent months. The towers, include ones near the power plant in Falls Village by the Housatonic River, on Johnson Road in Falls Village and near Route 63 near the Goshen/Cornwall town lines. 

The work itself isn’t necessarily visible to the untrained eye. What’s noticeable is the large planked area that now surrounds the towers, and the yellow temporary driveways at the saddle between the road and the grassy fields around the towers.

“Those are timber mats that we put down to protect the soil and grass around the poles from getting rutted up when we bring in heavy equipment,” explained Frank Poirot, a spokesman for Eversource, describing the wood planked areas. 

As for the actual work being done on the towers, he said, “We’re installing a fiber optic wire at the top of our structures. They follow the circuit from the substation at the hydroplant in Falls Village to a couple other substations and then terminate at our substation in Torrington.

“We’re doing it all across the state. This is just one segment of the work.”

The fiber optic lines will not be used for public broadband or cell phone access. They are exclusively for “Eversource operators to send signals to the substations and for them to send signals back to us, about operating conditions.”

The fiber optic lines allow information to travel much more quickly, he said, and dramatically improve communications.

The top line also provides protection to the power lines from lightning strikes, Poirot said. 

The fiber optic lines are inside of new cables that take the place of the older aluminum cables that were there exclusively to offer lightning protection. The new cables act as shields but also have the fiber optic lines inside them. 

Some of the lines will also be replaced with the help of helicopters in the coming weeks.