OT: When high voltage goes astray

PFFOG · 02-01-2009, 05:57 AM

Check out the house at the 3:50 range.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEAtWiUGeiA&eurl=http://www.sportriders.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1465&page=214

roger albert · 02-01-2009, 07:15 AM

Awesome. People are always finding new ways to clean their gutters.
Beats a Looj even

ckcarr · ckcarr's Garage

In my industry we get those safety warnings once in a while with pictures of people that tried to steal copper wire and end up barbequed. I think the last one was a guy that actually climbed up a pole and tried to cut a high voltage line. Not very pretty what electricity can do.

dirtbill · 08:06 AM

Wow an electrical utility without fuse or relay protection for overcurrent. not good, that should have opened the ciruit within 2 to 3 seconds, perhaps auto reclosed once or twice then stayed open.

Yes copper theft has been a big issue, one guy tried stealing it out of a 27.6kV station, he probably didn't feel a thing, but the craziest one I've heard in a while is a guy who was having an on going dispute with his electric utility who kept shutting him off using an opener on the pole in front of his house, he had apparently climbed his aluminum ladder and closed it with a stick a couple of times, then one day he tried it again and fried himself in front of his wife and kids.

roger albert · 02-01-2009, 08:29 AM

The problem with arc overs, is that though they have high localized current, they are by definition not protected by localized current constraints, and the current is often not high enough to trip protection the next level up. They'd have to go to much tighter granularity ($$)
Plus, we wouldn't get these cool vids

OwenM · 02-02-2009, 02:40 AM

We must pay the extra $ for “finer granularity” in overload protection in Oz, because I have never heard of or seen anything like that here. If a short occurs in the local distribution grid the circuit breakers-fuses activate to isolate the fault, no fireworks.

Cool video though, quite amazing. It would appear the high voltage feeder has shorted to the lower voltage local lines sending high voltage into local homes. Nasty, I hope know one was injured or killed. Some hefty safety and liability issues there for the power company and or their contractors.

RBMann · 02-02-2009, 09:37 AM

Once watched a high voltage line arc to the ground for 45 minutes, near our old house. An ice storm had caused the line to break and drop. Very interesting show while it tried to make glass in a neighbor's yard.

In November, a tree fell and knocked the high voltage off the top of the pole where my brother-in-law's house is connected. The best guess, it shorted to the TV cable and entered the house that way. Digital projector, AV amp, sub-woofer, cable box/DVR, computer, laser printer, modem, router and the connectors on all the Ethernet cables were toasted. His Internet, phone and cable were out for a week and it took about a month to get everything replaced/functioning again.

Very scary as I live next to him and our line runs one pole away.