If Only We Knew How Stupid We Were

If only.... if we knew in advance, some of us wouldn't make so many dumb judgement calls.

Calling upon the topic of the previous post, we were dispatched to a report of... what else... power lines down.

Man, is it just me, or does this power company stuff cross with fire department stuff just a bit too often here?

I arrived with the first Big Red Truck, and one of our newer kids had arrived just ahead of me in his personal vehicle.

An aside. If you're one of the new fire kids, I have a general observation for you: Generally, you have no awareness, no fracking idea of 95% of the crap that will kill you in this job. You're thinking, yeah, that's those other new guys, but I read the trades, I participate in training, I work out, I study on my own... he's not talking to me.

Um... yes, I am in fact talking to you, too. But thanks for your extra effort. It doesn't hurt.

You will spend at least the next 20 or so years being continuously surprised at what, except for the grace of God, almost killed you, that you never imagined coming. Get used to that feeling, respect it, and slow down.

Anyway, back to the story....

I get off the Engine and size up the situation. There is no traffic accident at this intersection, so no clear reason for anything to be on the ground. Red Flag. What happened that I can't see? It might just have done falled down, but I don't know yet. It is telecom wire. The three phase primary and neutral are intact. There are no immediate hazards. By my trained eye, it is "probably" safe.

Then I see new kid, walking right up to the wire. Oh no he isn't....

I call at him to hang back. He, being the new young stud who attends more classes than I do and is on the list to get hired at the nearby City, hesitates for a half second and then ignores me, pretending he didn't hear me.

With apologies to Dave Barry, I swear I am not making this up, he kneels down, reaches out to the wire tentatively, and then does this kind of fast-touch-and-pullback thing... kind of like when you're using the least-intelligent way to see if the burner is really hot. What, you're testing for a buzz to see if it's live?

I don't remember what I said after that to get him to back off, but I admit it probably wasn't professional. Even then, he sauntered back like he was done doing what he wanted on his own terms.  Smooth for a guy who has no idea of how dumb he just was.

I brought him behind the engine, mostly out of view and tore him a new orifice right there. I didn't wear an officer's helmet for nothing. Being ignorantly stupid is marginally excusable, but ignoring an order is most assuredly not. But the issue of obeying orders is merely ancillary to the story... I digress.

So here is the rundown:

#1 - The fact that he was 'testing' the wire tells me he is not able to differentiate between the various wires on the pole, and had no idea what he had in the first place.

#2 - If it had been a live service wire, 120V is still capable of killing, so why dink around with it? The ability to turn around and say 'it's hot!'? For what gain?

#3 - If it had been a live service wire, the electric current could have induced a muscle contraction, which would have resulted in his hand instantly and involuntarily grabbing the wire before he could pull his hand away. And then he'd just be there, holding it. Do I smell burning bacon?

#4 - If it had been the 14kV primary live on the ground: Kaboom. Almost certain death, and although a body would have remained for the funeral, a hose line to clean some of the mess would still be in order.

There were no hazards, no threats to life safety, it wasn't lying in the road, there was no traffic problem and not much of a pedestrian problem. All that risk playing with he knew not what, for zero benefit.

I tried to teach him in later days when I calmed down. I don't know if it stuck.

If only he knew how stupid he was. If he survives long enough, I don't expect him to fully grasp his situation from that day until he's at least 40.

To be fair, I've been doing this for many years, and I am only just beginning to realize how stupid I still am sometimes. I blanche to think about the dumb stuff I've done and somehow survived.

If you're a new kid... whatever you do, it won't be enough. You'll still vitally depend on your officers and mentors, and you'll still need a lot of luck. Do your part to not stack the odds further against you.

Now you know how stupid you are. We all are now and then. Now that you know, there are no excuses. Slow down, really slow down, and hopefully you'll go home after every call. Good luck.

Tutorial 6: Identifying the Wires

Last time we learned, at a very high level, about the different voltages of power lines used to get electricity from the generation station to your power outlet. Along with that we touched on the concept of voltage as pressure, how it is raised at the generation station so that the electricity can be efficiently moved closer to where it will be consumed, and as it gets closer to the end user, it is gradually dropped in steps, depending on where it is going, until it is stepped down to household current right before it goes into your home.

Please understand that there is so much more, and I mean a lot more, stuff to be learned about this if you're technically minded and interested. I am intentionally only glossing over a lot of this stuff, as my intent is to make you, my patient and suffering readers, merely aware of what is going on, and not trying to make any of you experts. If I am successful in imparting this basic awareness of how stuff works, then it theoretically will make you understand my rants and grumblings. Isn't that pathetic of me? Deliberately teaching you guys so that I can rant, in order that you can nod in empathy and agree, yeah Grumpy, that sure is lame. Manufactured sympathy!

OK, enough reflection. What a buzz kill.

Today, we take a first look at what is on the transmission towers and power poles.

The overriding rule of always is: EVERYTHING IS DANGEROUS AND SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ENERGIZED. Even if you know what it is, don't touch it, EVER. I'll get into that more later.

First up: High voltage transmission. It's easier to sort out.

Pictures 1 and 2 you'll probably want to click on to view full size at some point. Both illustrate the same thing, though. High voltage transmission is always three-phase, meaning each circuit consists literally of three sets of conductor. In Picture 1, there are two circuits on the tower. In Picture 2, each tower has two circuits, for a total of four circuits in this power line corridor.

You'll note that in Picture 1, each phase consists of a bundle of four individual wires, while in Picture 2, each phase consists of two wires. Added wires is like a larger hose, less resistance, better efficiency. Typically, you'll see single wire phases up to 230kV. Two wires per phase starts to appear at 345kV. Three wires at 500kV and up. But there are exceptions. The number of insulator bells also is a good indication of how high the voltage is, but there are different manufacturers, ratings, and sizes of the bells, so the actual number doesn't mean as much as the overall distance. None of this really matters much from our point of view though, as all of these will pretty much flash-roast you if you touch them.

In both Picture 1 and Picture 2, if you look close, you'll see a couple of faint, thin wires at the very top of the structures. These are called static wires or shield wires, and they are grounded at every structure. They are not energized, per se, but you can frequently detect voltage on them due to induction from being so close to the actual power lines. Literally, the invisible magnetic field around the power lines passes close enough to induce voltage in them. Their real purpose is to provide a preferred target for lightning strikes, by being grounded, they draw the lightning bolt away from the power lines themselves. They are not used to carry a current, but they are still entirely unsafe to touch. Sometimes power companies also run fiber optic cables along side or attached to the static wires, because the existing power grid infrastructure provides a ready-made grid useful for laying down an information/data grid. The power company uses a tiny, negligible portion of this bandwidth for data transfer between stations, and can lease the remaining bandwidth to cable, telephone and data providers.

That's basic transmission. Not too complicated. Subtransmission lines, say at voltages down around 34kV-69kV, will be similar in concept if not design. Smaller towers or more often wooden poles, three phases of single-wire, a single static line sometimes but not always. The main thing is that subtransmission usually remains uncomplicated, unlike the distribution stuff we're about to get into.

Picture 3 is a distribution pole. As a rule, the most dangerous stuff is at the top of the pole, and decreases in its danger score as you go down.

From the top down, then....

Three-phase primary, I am guessing somewhere between 8kV-14kV. The wires coming from either direction are installed as dead-ends, and are attached to the ends of the insulator strings. The dead ends from either direction are then connected with "jumpers" that are attached to the wire on each side and are held in place by an insulator on top. Although not preferred compared to an actual line switch, these jumpers can be detached from either side to "open" the circuit.

The sharply angled wires leading down to the right are guy wires, used to brace or hold the pole in place, entirely expected on poles where the circuit takes a turn, and as you can see the three phase is turning slightly to the left at this pole. Without the guy wires, this pole would want to be pulled to the left by the weight and tension of the primary.

The next single wire down is the neutral. It is grounded at frequent intervals along the circuit (ideally at every pole), and leads back to the big transformer neutral at whatever substation(s) this circuit travels to. The neutral is also extended to each customer service drop and ultimately grounded through the grounding rod at every customer site.

When you see the "braided" service drop at your house, there are usually two "hot" wires, with black insulation, wrapped around an un-insulated cable that carries the tension from the pole to your home. This bare cable is also the neutral. Since there are typically three wires total, we call this "triplex".  You can see some of the triplex here, the hot insulated wires coming from a nearby poletop transformer and apparently provided to power the streetlight.

The last wires on the bottom are nondescript telecommunication stuff: Phone, cable TV, etc.

Picture 4 is a single-phase distribution pole with a "fused cutout" and poletop transformer.

Again, from the top down....

Single phase primary.

Hard to make out is where the jumper is attached to the primary, but you can see just to the right of the top insulator, the clamp where the jumper is attached before it runs down to the fused cutout. In plain terms, a 'fused cutout' is a device that can be used to open the circuit leading down to the poletop transformer, and the part that can be opened also serves as a fuse which will blow and cut off power to the transformer if it were to fail.

Poletop transformer.

Neutral and service drop wires.

Clear as a bell or clear as mud?

What I want to leave you with, particularly regarding distribution poles, is this: There are no guarantees of safety about anything. You never know when a high voltage primary is damaged and has dropped down into some of the other stuff. Usually when this happens, if things are grounded properly, the resulting fault will cause a fuse or substation circuit breaker to open. Usually. On the other hand, what if you're touching something "safe" at the moment something "unsafe" falls into it? Depending on the sensitivity of the protection on that circuit, it could take up to several seconds to clear the fault, and in that delay your body would bear the brunt of it: You're dead.

A traffic accident involving a pole can tweak/whiplash all of the lines for blocks in all directions. So let's say you stumble upon a "benign" telecom cable hanging low, and you "know" it is safe, so you grab it to move it out of the way. Little did you know about the car that smacked a pole two blocks away, causing the primary at the wreck to fall onto the telecom, and the recoil/whiplash simultaneously causing the telecom in front of you to break loose from a mount and hang low. You reach out and... hey, where'd all these angels come from?

Until a power company guy is on the scene and says it is safe to touch, keep your hands off of EVERYTHING. Even when he says it is safe, he won't be offended if you ask him to touch stuff first.

Wow... long post. And I'm really only getting started!

What we learned: Forget what you just learned about what is what, all of that stuff can potentially kill you, even when all you see is telecom and no actual electrical power lines are in sight. Leave it all alone, keep people away, and wait for the power company guy.

So... it's time to ask again. Are these generic tutorials helping? Anything you want me to elaborate on? Too much? Not enough? Any requests for a particular topic?

(Click this link to see all posts tagged "tutorial")

Deer Fail or Win, We're Not Sure

This Fail picture posted in honor of Officer Krupke's recent post about a deer encounter.

Next time, Officer K, do it this way and the questions won't be about if there was a deer involved or not.

This pic also includes a secondary but unlabeled FAIL: Nice parking spot... pay no mind to that there hydrant.

My First Line Trip

A long time ago, in a control room far, far away . . . . .
 
I was a wet-behind-the-ears dispatcher. Just got bumped up from being the 'numbers' and generation balancing guy, and moved to the desk where real stuff happens. Circuit breakers that I can control.

Three Mouse Clicks from Disaster!

There is nothing you can screw up on the numbers desk that cannot be fixed by an accountant with or without a checkbook.

But now, a mistake will darken cities or blow stuff up, or worse, injure or kill someone.

Yes sir, I made the Big Time. And I was Ready!

Here we go! Update the Log. Grumpy Dispatcher is on the Desk!

(boring hours of pretty much nothing ensue..........................)

Beeeeeeeeeeeeep! A 115kV Line trip! Action!

I jumped out of my chair almost as fast as I did the first hundred or so times my old-school red Minitor I "brick" went off when I was a jumpy new firefighter probie.

Whoops, wait, no turnouts to don here. I'll just sit back down and act like I meant to do that. Yeah.

Supervisor comes over. I'm really working under his eye, not on my own. But I've got my own desk. Yeah, I'm the man.

He suggests I try to close in and test the line.

Smoothly, I pull up the control window for one of the breakers. Act like you've done this before, make it look good.

Yes, I am The Man, I control big circuit breakers miles away!

"Select", "Close", "Confirm". Three Mouse Clicks.

Nothing happens.

Try it again, he says. Three clicks. Nothing.

Try the other end, he says, maybe the relays won't let you pick that line up dead from that end.

Click, click, click. This time it shows closed for a second or two, then opens again. Locked out.

A real outage! Drama!

I get to pull out the callout list and talk to the crews, and direct them in to patrol the line and save the day.

My shift ends before the crew arrives at the site. I pass along the info to my relief so he can finish the mop-up. My work here is done.

----------------

Back in that night. Ready to watch over the world for another 12 hours.

Guess what, rookie? Yeah, that line you tested three times? Yeah, those first two tests the breakers popped back open so fast they never showed closed on the console. Well, the conductor was laying on the guy wire, and you banged into the ground three times and started a nice fire. 25 acres last I heard. Aren't you a fireman? Way to go, rookie!

Um.

Oops.

The intervening years since that new (and not yet Grumpy) dispatcher hit the desk have made this incident increasingly amusing over time....

Pole Bracing Fail

Yep, just what we needed, that'll hold 'er until tomorrow!