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New 3 phase underground tap feeding 12470Y/7200 --- 480Y/277 pad mounted 500 kVA transformer. Had to have most of the primary conduit directional bored because part of it went under an in-use shipping dock at a very active chicken egg producer (over 2 million eggs per day). This is power for a new 500'x300' (I'm guessing on size) refrigerated storage and shipping building. So anyway the concrete transformer pad, secondary conduit and wire are provided by the customer, everything else is installed by us and we terminate everything that's in our equipment.  On the left is the primary cabinet, H1a,2a,3a bushings have the primary wire terminated in load break elbows which provide an electrical connection that we can manipulate with hot line tools. H1b,2b,3b bushings have 10kv lightning arresters installed. At the top of the primary cabinet are the bayonet fuse holders. These are fuses that separate the primary windings from the bus that goes between the high voltage bushings. Even a single phase transformer that you would see in a subdivision is set up this way, so that if the transformer has an internal fault or there is a fault on one of the secondary services, the winding will be cleared from the bus, and the primary wire that feeds through (and down the street) can continue to stay hot and minimize the outage.  Secondary cabinet. The round black things around the X1,2,3 bushings are current transformers (CT's) that we use for metering.  Close up of our potential transformers (PT's). Strictly speaking these are not necessary, but they drop the voltage down so we don't have 480v in the meter base, which is a lot safer. I didn't get a picture of the meter base, but it's where you see all my metering wires exit to the right. Standard 13 terminal 3-phase base with knife blade switches and CT shorting blocks. Anyhow I hope you find my wiring to be clean and done in a workmanship-like manner.  Underground is just about the most boring thing I do, but it makes for the most concise pictures. Remove the L for full size. angryrobots fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Oct 29, 2016 |
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Oct 29, 2016 01:28
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If you have any questions that relate to use of odd hardware, you can guarantee that it's because we use material provided for the job by our warehouse manager. Also as I recall, they don't like us using crimp style terminals with only one bolt, and the terminals (that we have) with 2 bolts don't line up with the holes in the transformer's secondary bar.
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Oct 29, 2016 02:35
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There is also the under-utilized HVAC thread.
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Nov 16, 2016 19:07
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I saw that series in a safety meeting. We had copper thieves attempt to steal the source load conductor from a set of voltage regulators in service. It did not go well but they escaped. Another time they cut down a transformer platform bank with a sawzall. I guess they thought the line was dead but it was not. They also got away.
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Jan 8, 2017 04:27
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LOL at these nimby fuckers. It's like dealing with children...they want solar power because they think it's "free", but with zero power quality concessions and they don't want to actually see the pv panels. Although RE: the original question, that is actually a switched capacitor bank just like wemgo said. I'm not familiar with that installation, but it's likely that in this case the pv panel does power the control for the switches, since there isn't any 120/240v on that pole. angryrobots fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Jun 4, 2017 |
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Jun 4, 2017 02:45
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A month without posts? That just won't do. Here's something I had to deal with last week: Your power company hates this one weird trick that saves money on your bill!
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Jul 15, 2017 15:21
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There can be, but generally we don't bother because we're ridiculously understaffed and criminal charges require having at least one person go to every court date. And in this case, they were only stealing for about a week, so I just cut them completely loose and whoever set up the account will be liable for a hefty sum (estimated usage + $100 tampering fee + probably >$1k deposit) if they ever want to be reconnected here or anywhere on our system. I had one a couple weeks ago that was caught stealing some years before and never paid up - they stole for something like a year or two before getting caught. Anyhow, they paid $4200 to get power to a new location. Now, if we ever caught someone stealing on a large scale like a grow house, that would probably be pursued because they can steal $50k in power in 6 months with an operation in a single wide trailer. Usually those will dig up and attach to the service underground, while still operating an active account at the location to belay suspicion. I was told of another local power company who replaced 2 transformers at a location before figuring out something was up.
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Jul 15, 2017 16:34
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Peel back the insulation and attach their conductor with a split bolt or whatever. Some have their own linemen/electricians with professional tools and training. Edit: and per a guy who has seen several, apparently a soda bottle filled with great stuff expanding foam makes for a better waterproof splice capsule than commercially available kits. angryrobots fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Aug 13, 2017 |
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Aug 13, 2017 13:51
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Yeah. You can work on it hot with precaution, we do so legitimately every day. Generally not splicing into cable (hot or not) that's not in a vault or termination box of some kind, but that's more an issue with re-accessibility. Here, maybe a picture makes it more clear:  The cable (sweetbriar - 4/0 aluminum urd direct bury) is three individual cables twisted together, with no extra jacketing. It's used for 120/240 residential voltage. Once you get a big enough section uncovered, you could pull the cables apart and work them one at a time. angryrobots fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Aug 14, 2017 |
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Aug 14, 2017 13:08
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Zemyla posted:And as long as the electricity doesn't want to go into you more than it wants to continue down the rest of the cable, you're good, right? So I'm thinking what's throwing people off about this, is that it seems like if you touch the hot cable you will instantly be electrocuted, right? For starters, even if you were bare footed, the dirt you're standing on has a really high resistance back to the source. Actually, you could peel the insulation off the wire and in almost all cases let it sit on the ground, it's not going to do anything. There was a video where a guy drove an 8' ground rod and hooked a 120v wire to it. Didn't trip the breaker, read 0 amps with a clamp on. That's not all situations, I'm just trying to illustrate that the ground you're standing on is not a good conductor, especially for 120v. The thieves probably just wear regular clean leather gloves, but they may use some kind of rubber gloves as well, and are wearing rubber soled shoes. That's a lot of resistance to 120v. The bigger hazard is between the two legs and neutral - now that has the potential to create a large arc flash, or electrocute you if you got in between them. So simply enough, they only work on one at a time, re-insulating before starting on the next one. Now, I'm just trying to explain how the thieves were able to easily splice into hot cable. As far as I'm aware, no utility would do this, if for no other reason than not wanting to bury a termination. Sometimes we have damaged cable that has to be dug up, repaired, and re-buried...but that is done de-energized and not to splice on with more cable in any case. Anything like that would happen in a vault so it could be accessed. angryrobots fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Aug 23, 2017 |
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Aug 23, 2017 21:32
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