I wonder what that cost

[Dftodd]

Here, too. Two squirrels once took out the county's largest employer (23,000+) by shorting out the transfer switch between the grid and the site's cogen power plant, leaving everything dark. There happened to be a replacement switch on the East coast, otherwise 120-180 day lead time for replacement. It still took close to a week to get the replacement from the East coast to the West coast and in place. As far as I can tell, there isn't much inventory of larger electrical equipment anywhere.

Speaking of "Booms". My then to be wife and I were walking out of a local bakery, ordering a wedding cake, and walked under some power lines.
"BANG!" followed by a slightly charred seagull landing at our feet. Scared the living daylights out of both of us.

I have since seen triangular additions to crossbars to keep birds from getting too close.

What does this triangle do?

This photograph shows an electrical power distribution line in beautiful Summit County, Colorado, at an altitude of about 9100 feet above sea level. The first reader to post a comment correctly ex…

blog.oppedahl.com

Stay safe out there.

All the best,

Peter

Yeah, we had a transfer station get wiped out by a squirrel knocking out power for a day or so.

They bussed in a used part from somewhere and got us back up.

But then about 2 months later the used part had a catastrophic failure.

We were out for a couple days until they could replace it with another used part.

They had a 6 month wait for the part.

It was shortly after Katrina, so spare parts were hard to come by.

Factor in a few large areas being smoked by tornados, (my town included) as well as other natural disasters around that time, it really taxed the power grids.

 

[oosik]

Four years ago - almost to the day. Evening Bar-B-Que. Saw a transformer explode. What a fantastic sight. Particularly since it was a block away and at my son's place in Spokane.

Around here - this time of year - an event such as this would likely start a large wildfire.

 

[bcp]

About 20 years ago, I watched a squirrel jump onto a transformer at my house. Big flash and bang, squirrel falling into the low bushes at the base. Saw breakers open and house went dead. Called it in. They INSISTED I check my main circuit breaker first, before taking the report.

Went back out to the pole and the squirrel was gone!

Repairman came out and rewired it all with insulated wire instead of bare. No problems since then.

Bruce

 

[Too many Kubotas]

Four years ago - almost to the day. Evening Bar-B-Que. Saw a transformer explode. What a fantastic sight. Particularly since it was a block away and at my son's place in Spokane.

Around here - this time of year - an event such as this would likely start a large wildfire.

One neat thing with the Northridge quake in California (which didn't really affect us much, living on a ridge to the south) was seeing transformers blow up by Los Angeles.

It was quite the light show, and oddly enough we had no fires nearby as a result. Oddly, because fires were all too common.

 

[Dftodd]

Four years ago - almost to the day. Evening Bar-B-Que. Saw a transformer explode. What a fantastic sight. Particularly since it was a block away and at my son's place in Spokane.

Around here - this time of year - an event such as this would likely start a large wildfire.

Years ago I was sitting in traffic waiting for a light to change during a thunder storm.

Lightening struck the pole right next to me blowing a transformer.

That scared the daylights out of me. My foot came off the clutch when I jumped in my seat and I almost hit the vehicle in front of me

 

[Oaktree]

The last time I lost power, the guys who showed up to fix it where out of Mississippi. I'm in East Texas.

Somehow the metal rod that holds the hot wire at the top of my power pole had gone bad. It took about ten minutes to remove it, and install a new one. I have no idea how long they spent going from pole to pole to figure that out..

Around here - this time of year - an event such as this would likely start a large wildfire.

Had something similar happen here a couple weeks ago. Tree came down, hit the top (hot) wire and the impact pulled the wire off the top insulator of the pole in front of my house (even though the tree that fell was a couple hundred yards away, and closer to a different pole). Wire was arcing and sparking against the pole for quite some time before the power company got there to repair it. Burnt the pole pretty good. It had rained earlier in the day, so the pole was still wet.

Always wondered how "visiting" power company workers can troubleshoot outages far from their own region. Do the local companies make local grid maps available to these guys? Seems that just finding the shutoff might be a challenge in an unfamiliar area.

 

[ponytug]

Around here, they get maps (tablets) and keys. Our local guys, at least the ones that I have spoken with, really like the tablets because they are more up to date, and they aren't having to organize rolls of paper.

All the best,

Peter