Ground wire (transmission line)

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In a transmission line, ground wires are wires that run above the usual conductors.

In the early days of power engineering, lightning was not well understood. Although it was described generally as electricity coming out of the sky, more specific information was not well known.

This was bad since lightning caused damage to power companies' equipment, as well as to that of the end users. Much research was undertaken, with the aim of improving the reliability of the power transmission lines.

It was determined that proper ground wires above the normal conductors would make it very unlikely for lightning to hit the transmission lines directly. For this to work, it requires the towers to be well grounded. Once the proper design was implemented, reliability of transmission lines increased greatly.