Your Hive Lineman is back with another edition of A Day With A Lineman. Man, things have been pretty lively around here when it comes to power outages the past few days. It’s not due to a poorly managed system I can tell you that:wink:wink. A few days ago it was a farmer who destroyed a pole and now this time Mother Nature was the source of destruction. She did make a bit of a mess of things. Alright let’s dive in and access the damages and repair them.
It’s my weekend to be on standby, meaning if any outage calls come in and I am the one to respond. I was just sitting around after getting some stuff done around the house and my phone rang…
”Hey, we got a blown fuse on a 50hp well pump and 25hp booster pump”
I changed into my FR work clothes kissed my wife good bye, and told the kids that I Love Them, then hopped in my new bucket truck to go re-fuse this pump. I told my wife it wouldn’t be long and I would be back in a little bit, just a blown fuse. Boy was I wrong!! I guess this is why you never assume.
As I made my way down the dirt/gravel road, I noticed something. 4 poles away from the transformer pole that had the blown fuse this is what I saw..
That crossarm is blown to $#!+!!
At least the wire is still in the air, that’s a plus. I’m gonna need some help with this one and I haven’t even got to the blown fuse yet. I called in for some backup to change out this crossarm that frikken exploded, then headed to the blown fuse on a transformer bank. A transformer bank is 2-3 overhead transformers connected together in a certain way to provide 3-phase power for pumps and different industrial machinery.
Sure enough, not just one but 2 fuses blown
I fly up in my bucket and give a good thorough visual inspection of the transformers. I don’t see any damage at all or any sign of a critter getting blown up. I installed new fuses and close them in one at a time hoping that they hold and don’t blow again. They held thank God!! Now back to that crossarm that got completely destroyed and think of a game plan to change out the arm.
I flew up to take a look at the damage, then when I looked down the tap towards another transformer bank…
Ya, that’s not suppose to be like that either. Must be that airplane construction and the wire is making a turn. :wink:wink
A 1/2 inch lag bolt that holds the braces came out, not a big deal, easy fix. Oh great, 2 more blown fuses on that transformer bank too! I hope those transformers are good or else we are gonna be out here for a while fixing this mess left behind from a lightning strike.
That lightning strike blew this SOB apart!!
DANG!!
There were chunks of wood 20-30 feet away from this pole. Talk about an explosion!! WOW. I’m glad this was 3 crossarms stacked together or this wire would be on the ground and it could have possibly tore apart the other crossarm too.
After about 20 minutes the other Lineman show up with material and another bucket truck
Look it’s my old bucket truck. Lol
Putting our heads together we came up with a plan to change this arm out. First we de-energized the tap by using a hot stick to pull the jumpers down from the main line. Tested the tap de-energized and installed protective grounds. It’s not dead unless it’s grounded
We chose to bolt the new fiberglass arm just underneath the old one. Hang new insulators and automatic deadends.
Automatics deadends have a sort of Chinese Fingertrap inside of them. Once the wire is pushed in, the spring-loaded jaws inside won’t let the wire pull back out
We also needed to extend the wire a little bit in order to reach the new arm. 6 foot pieces were pushed into the automatic deadends with an automatic splice on the other end. One wire grip on the new piece of wire and one on the old wire with a hoist to pull them together. This will create slack in the old wire that is connected to the old arm.
Once there is slack in the wire going to the old arm, the wire is cut from the old arm. Just like that the wire has been transferred to the new arm. All that is left is to cut the old wire to length and push it in the automatic splice AKA A Bump. They work the same way as the automatic deadend
Tear the old blown apart arm off of there and things are looking pretty good. With a fresh set of jumpers this repair is complete
Now to fix the other cross arm. The wheat is about knee high and driving our trucks in there would cause some pretty good damage to this crop. Looks like I’m climbing this one to hammer in a new lag to hold the braces that keep he crossarm straight. I grabbed my climbing tools and took off into the wheat field
DANG!!
WOW
This pole took a hit of lightning also
It blew a big chunk off the side
I grabbed one brace, pulled the arm down flat then grabbed the other. Lined the holes up and drove in a new lag. Climbes back down the pole and walked though the wheat back to the truck.
That looks better now doesn’t it?
With all the repairs made, it’s time to remove our protective grounds and install the jumpers to the main line with a hot stick. I placed 2 jumpers and the other Lineman placed the last one
There was one last thing we needed to do. Re-fuse the transformer bank at the end of the tap we were working on. One fuse closed in just fine, but the other… not so good. Ya, it blew up! After getting up in the air and looking a little closer at it I found the problem. It was a lightning arrestor that was bad. The other Lineman suspected it was bad but it was hard to tell. Sometimes you never know unless you try to energize it and let it blow up. Lol. I quickly swapped it out and we were good to go. The lightning arrestor did its job by protecting the transformer from the over-current from the lightning.
Well now that the mess from Mother Nature is all cleaned up and fixed up it's time to head on home back to the family. Hopefully my dinner is still warm but I doubt it. I’m starving!!!
And That’s A Wrap!!
Thanks for stopping in and checking out what Lineman do to keep the lights on. Some of the obstacles and challenges we face when building and maintaining the electrical grid.
Cheers
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