Believe it or not, when a customer asked what was wrong this one time, we said that their flux capacitor went out. He he he. I had a few guys that came up with some pretty funny ones.
So, I've read quite a few of your lineman stories now and by far this sounds like it was the most dangerous. What I didn't quite catch in this story is what the cause ended up being. Was it still just the bird, but something failed that looked good at first glance, or was there something else to it? You said the elbow was the culprit of the explosion, but it looked like it was in good shape prior. So are you saying it was actually damaged to cause the explosion, or was it something else.
Inquiring minds want to know. :)
And, also, this is why you get paid the big bucks and I stay as far away from power lines and transformers as humanly possible.
I believe the bird caused the initial outage, but the fault current caused some damage internally to the lightning arrestor. Then when I put the juice to it again that is when the arrestor just flat out exploded. I’m glad I wasn’t close by and told everyone to stay away. It was a pretty violent explosion yet it didn’t damage the transformer internally.
That's the pretty amazing part—that the transformer was built to withstand an explosion like that, and pretty much contained it to it. No one was hurt, including you, because of your adherence to safety protocols and because others heeded it.
I know you'd rather not have things like that happen, because even if you're laughing in the moment, then the rest of the worrisome thoughts come flooding in and it only takes once for things to go really wrong.
All in all, time to be counting some blessings, I think. :)
I was totally expecting the transformer to be bad/ruinined.
I kind like when things go boom, but like you stated often times it results in more work/damage and you just hope people weren’t close by.
This is some impressive wizardry.
Seriously I look at all those magical parts and all I see is "Flux capacitor - 1.21 Jiggawatts!"
Be careful out there.
Believe it or not, when a customer asked what was wrong this one time, we said that their flux capacitor went out. He he he. I had a few guys that came up with some pretty funny ones.
So, I've read quite a few of your lineman stories now and by far this sounds like it was the most dangerous. What I didn't quite catch in this story is what the cause ended up being. Was it still just the bird, but something failed that looked good at first glance, or was there something else to it? You said the elbow was the culprit of the explosion, but it looked like it was in good shape prior. So are you saying it was actually damaged to cause the explosion, or was it something else.
Inquiring minds want to know. :)
And, also, this is why you get paid the big bucks and I stay as far away from power lines and transformers as humanly possible.
I believe the bird caused the initial outage, but the fault current caused some damage internally to the lightning arrestor. Then when I put the juice to it again that is when the arrestor just flat out exploded. I’m glad I wasn’t close by and told everyone to stay away. It was a pretty violent explosion yet it didn’t damage the transformer internally.
That's the pretty amazing part—that the transformer was built to withstand an explosion like that, and pretty much contained it to it. No one was hurt, including you, because of your adherence to safety protocols and because others heeded it.
I know you'd rather not have things like that happen, because even if you're laughing in the moment, then the rest of the worrisome thoughts come flooding in and it only takes once for things to go really wrong.
All in all, time to be counting some blessings, I think. :)
I was totally expecting the transformer to be bad/ruinined.
I kind like when things go boom, but like you stated often times it results in more work/damage and you just hope people weren’t close by.