I bet Westie is glad he's not in charge of this one !

[SimonH2]

I'm surprised no-one's posted a link to this yet. Video of a NY substation "exploding" when the sea water got into it.
Something tells me it'll take them a while to sort that out.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZAqYZ433TeQ

It would be interesting if anyone knows any more about this substation - such as what sort of size it was, and the size of it's feeds. I'm guessing there was quite a bit of current driving that arc for a while

 

[SimonH2]

Hmm, found this article - has a photo at the top.
I see a lot of overtime coming up for some people in the next few weeks/months.
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/201...scusses-dark-days-ahead/?mod=google_news_blog

 

[rjm2k]

14th is what I saw being reported

http://www.coned.com/publicissues/east_river_repowering_project.asp

350 Megawatts

http://www.stpcvta.org/coned/conedbasicfacts.htm

But the other report mentions the 13th

 

[westie101]

Unravelling the mess is the hardest part, once we know what needs fixed it gets easier.
Following the Carlisle floods in 2005 we had about 500 faults in total due to the wind that night (highest gust 126mph)

It is the same after every incident like this with the press demanding answers we don't have for the first few days. We tend now to not even try to fix anything on day 1 just spend the day restoring what we can and priority customers whilst patrolling to find where the faults actually are

 

[westie101]

This is the plan for one of the Florida power companies

http://www.fpl.com/storm/restoration_priorities.shtml

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I wonder what their plan is for restoration if the volcano on La Palma lets rip and the western side of the island falls into the sea and a 50m tsunami hits the Eastern seaboard of the US?

 

[securespark]

Give up?

 

[SimonH2]

It is the same after every incident like this with the press demanding answers we don't have for the first few days. We tend now to not even try to fix anything on day 1 just spend the day restoring what we can and priority customers whilst patrolling to find where the faults actually are

Not so different to my job then - there's nothing quite like having the MD looking over your shoulder asking when the server will be fixed for distracting you from figuring out WTF is wrong with it
Last time that happened, I think he got the message from the look I gave him, and he decided to leave me to it.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Use the PFY as your messenger.

 

[Lectrician]

The area it feeds must have been relatively small, as all the lights in shot remain on!

 

[SimonH2]

From the way it's been described, I think it's more a case of this facility feeds the whole of the city "down" from it (IIRC they talk about "down town"). The area actually around it is probably fed from other facilities "up" from it.
Ie, it's not in the centre of the area it serves.

Probably very much not "what we'd design today", but I suspect it's a case of loads grew, and it was easiest to shift loads from this facility to another one nearer the outside feeds - thus leaving this free to supply more to loads furthest from the outside feeds. So it ends up on the edge, or even outside, of the area it serves. If you follow that - it was a late night last night

 

[bernardgreen]

Simon may well be right. The US "network" is very different to the UK system. And in places almost wierd.

In 1978 I visited a radio station in New England that had incoming supplies from two different electricity companies and switched between them. Officially it was to ensure the station had power if one supply failed but (un-officially ) the price per unit also influenced which was used.

I also have memories from that same trip of a power generating station in the middle of a US town that did not supply any customers in the town. The town council which "owned" the local network had decided to import cheaper power from some other supplier. As I recall it the power station's entire output went direct to an industrial user(s) on the outskirts of the town. Maybe the industrial user(s) had bought the redundant station and ran it as part of their own operation.

 

[ricicle]

After external power cuts on our site I normally get scores of people asking "what caused that ?". The reply I always use is that we're late paying the bill and that was just a warning !

 

[SimonH2]

After external power cuts on our site I normally get scores of people asking "what caused that ?". The reply I always use is that we're late paying the bill and that was just a warning !

At my last place we went through a phase of lots of power cuts - and needless to say "the management" would ask the same question every time, and get given a copy of the same answers/options as the week/month before (yes, the guy actually got to the state of just photocopying the same sheet of paper). Once they'd seen the costs, and the power had been on for a day they'd just forget about it ... until next time.

One of the options we were offered was a second feed from the village supply* so we could be switched over if our feed went down. Management were considering this until I pointed out that this would require an engineer from the DNO to switch over ... and that engineer would be out looking to restore the supply to us and a few other villages on our branch line. In other words, we'd not get switched over until after the power was back on.

After a while they seemed to have vastly improved <something> and power cuts became very rare.

* We were on the end of an 11kV line (with our own transformer) that comes from Roosecote (near Barrow, used to have a coal fired station, now has a gas one) via about every village in the area. The village across the railway is fed from the main substation at Ulverston. Most times our power went off, we could look across the bridge and see the lights still on in the houses 100yd away !