Power Line to my house was broken

[MossRoad]

Looking back at the pics, I cannot help but wonder if both ends of the broken wire are laying on the chain link fence....thus making the chain link fence complete the neutral circuit and keep the voltage stable in the house.....

There's no neutral circuit. It's ground.

If you go out to Eddie's road, and follow the top and bottom wires on the poles to a 3 phase distribution point, the top one is going to be connected to 1 of the phases (hot) and the bottom one is going to be connected to ground, because there's no neutral in that 3 phase distribution.

I just went out and looked at ours. We have 3 phase running down our road. It's three wires on top of the poles. There is no neutral wire. If there was, there would be 4 wires.

One of the 3 phase wires is connected to the top of our transformer. The other top is connected to ground that runs down the pole to earth. There is no neutral wire.

Three wires come out of the secondary of the transformer. Two 120v hots and a center tap neutral. There is no ground wire.

At the house, the 2 hots and neutral pass through the meter. There is no ground wire.

In the service entrance panel, the neutral is bonded to the ground wire that goes out to ground rod(s). That's the only place neutral and ground are bonded.

Any sub-panels past the service disconnect have isolated neutrals and grounds.

At least, that's the way I understand it.

 

[k0ua]

Please STAY CLEAR of that primary Neutral wire as it can still have a potential of back feed from another upstream or down stream source..Power banks and such ..The power company should get that fixed ASAP..

Coobie, please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the reason Eddie still has electrical service is because current is flowing in the actual earth, the land under his feet to complete his electrical circuit?.

It is not near as good as that wire that is laying on the ground, but connections on poles with their copper ground wires going into the actual earth on both sides of the broken wire are now carrying the entire load of his residence. This is not a particularly good thing to have those currents flowing in the ground instead of that wire, but that is my understanding of how he still has service.

For those that don't know, Coobie is a retired electrical lineman, and certainly has far more experience and knowledge than I about these things.

 

[Diggin It]

I don't understand the utility blowing this off. My utility would have had it repaired the same day is was broken. The next day ast the very latest.

 

[EddieWalker]

Looking back at the pics, I cannot help but wonder if both ends of the broken wire are laying on the chain link fence....thus making the chain link fence complete the neutral circuit and keep the voltage stable in the house.....

The cable on the pole closest to my house was laying on my white, vinyl fence. The cable on the other pole is laying on the ground. It's all still laying there this evening when I got home.

 

[ruffdog]

I sure wouldn't be taking a leak out in the yard any time soon.

 

[lman]

I don't understand the utility blowing this off. My utility would have had it repaired the same day is was broken. The next day ast the very latest.

We aren't all so lucky to live on a hill.

 

[newbury]

All this TBN knowledge and nobody has mentioned it's in Texas which seems to have a pretty poor recent track record for quality utility work.
With the run around Eddie is getting it seems likes it is Lawyer time.

 

[grsthegreat]

Its amazing... but seeing as Texas had all the storm damage, they might be stretched too short to get to it. Last big wind storm that hit our area took out some 3500 Power poles. We had crews from Canada, Montana, washington and idaho trying to get stuff working. Can’t always get to everything same day in these situations.

 

[MossRoad]

I don't understand the utility blowing this off. My utility would have had it repaired the same day is was broken. The next day ast the very latest.

Because it's not a live wire. It's all grounded. Many places.

 

[MossRoad]

Here's a picture I took about half an hour ago of a transformer a block over from us. It's on a single leg. Do you see a neutral for the high voltage? No. There's only one wire feeding the transformer. The top wire. The three wires below it are the two 120v hots and 1 neutral from the transformer and run up and down the street to 6 houses on each side. The only other wire on that transformer runs down the pole to ground. No neutral for the high voltage side.