Man this one was tough to edit! I found myself repeating things quite a bit and had to figure out a way to cover all this equipment without blabbering on for 3 hours! lol. Keep in mind this is a very basic setup without multiple circuits! Much of the equipment we use also varies over the years as technology and manufacturers change. Many of our substations have a tap changer built into the power transformer as opposed to having a regulator near the Sub! Hope you enjoy!
Awesome job dude. Hell of explanation on all this a equipment in such a short video..Do any of your areas use the DA (distribution automation) scheme. Where they have several reclosers talk to each other..say if one trips out that will be isolated, others will close in and create abnormal feeds to restore power...it rarely works properly here, and creates a mess for the troublemen..
We just recently installed that here actually! And your right, it has definitely cause a few problems already. In theory it's great. As technology becomes more advanced hopefully it will become more reliable. I think perhaps some of the issues are also related to lack of familiarity with ourselves in the field as well
Blabber away. This video was the reason I subscribed to your channel. Hint: try 5-6 beers, that will settle down the Blabber Effect. Works for me, anyway
As a firefighter ive often found myself sitting there waiting for a lineman wondering what exactly is going on. Your videos are awesome and a great tool to help me understand. It helps they’re interesting too. Subbed for the great content. Stay safe!
Big time respect for you emergency responders! 👊👊 I'm not sure what it's like I'm other areas, but around here, the firefighters are really great to work with! I arrived to a really disturbing call a couple years ago, and the Chief was sure to check in with me a few times... You guys deal with a lot of difficult stuff. ♥️🍻🇨🇦
All that sitting around and constant polishing your big red water gun waiting for to clear up the next biblical disaster your paymasters covertly organise
@@OMACMedicFiveZero sometimes on services rated 400 amp or bigger, pulling the meter won’t shut off the power to the buildings. You have to know what your doing.
Hi Bob just wanted to let you know I’m an Electrical teacher and I letting my students know about your videos. They’ve been a help with the remote teaching
Interesting! I'm an Electrical engineer in Nigeria 🇳🇬 working in the power distribution sector. We almost do not have single phase transformers. Distribution transformers are typically three phase and are closed to 11Kv or 33 Kv feeders with three High tension fuses per phase. We sometimes see the three fuses rupture which most times indicates a serious fault on the transformer side. Interesting watch. Thanks!
You know, the primary fuse makes such a loud noise when it blows is because there is an explosive coating inside the tube of the fuse link. When the filament melts it ignites this material and the resultant explosion helps to eject the load side of the fuse link and break the circuit quickly to prevent an arc from forming. Kind of like an explosive load break system.
Hahah! I just about to write a reply along the lines of - it has to do with vibration from the magnetic field but you would have to ask someone with a little more expertise in that area ... Then I saw the punch Line haha well played Sir 🤣🙌🍻
Thank you for the info. I myself work as a industrial maintenance/electrician. Don't regularly deal with anything higher than 480 it usually gets contracted out, however we do have 69kv that comes to the property and then steps down to 14kv roughly, I could be a little off on that, then and we step it down again to 480 level. My wife asked me about something I didnt know myself, and it was the regulators that you talk about 2 minutes into the video. I appreciate you talking about that. I finally have a answer for her LOL. I'll check out the rest of the video when i got time. Much respect. Be safe sir.
Good rundown of the basic components and connections between them from the HV side in the substation out through to the customer's service. As always your videos are well executed and you explain things concisely and accurately. Well done Aaron and stay safe out on the lines.
Fantastic info sir! Thanks for your efforts out there. When we're hiding inside, the linemen are out there keeping us rich with electrons. A respectable profession if there ever was one!
A transformer does not contain magnets. (If they did, it would be erased [degaussed] in the first few cycles of use.) They do contain a "magnetic" core. This is usually low carbon steel, usually in layers, that are specially designed to work a given frequency with the least amount of loss and maximum field (flux) for a given current.
Watching this awesome piece again, Living at the corner of a main feeder, there are automated reclosers and when those things go it sometimes violently shakes the house, should note though being on this main distribution line there are many sidelines most of which are below ground so whenever there is a fault it usually effects several hundred to a thousand customers, also at the corner it goes from a 3 phase to a single phase on the road nearby which actually ends about a mile down the road before being taken over by another power provider to the area. Sometimes called the big two. Watching from New Jersey Somerset county, my power provider JCPL severs 1.1 million customers while the other company serves over 2.3 million customers. Personal Side Note Here: People say PSEG is better at restoration, they always gets customers up quicker, well yes having about 1.3 Poles per Customer and having shorter line spans versus JCPL having 2-3 poles per customer, longer line spans and serving a vast rural area at half as many customers with a non grid street setup will do that and also an extensive overhead tree canopy. Great video as always though.
So happy to see the pole that feeds my house on your video!! I was like “holy crap that pole is in my dooryard!” Thanks for the info I aways found power lines to be interesting, lots of good info!
@@JJ_900 I watched a random lineman video on RU-vid one day and quickly realized that, not only is it in my city, it's just a few miles from me. I got a chuckle, at least.
AFAIK lightning arrestors are actually Varistors, which are a semiconducting device that acts as an insulator until it reaches its breakdown voltage and then stars conducting. metal oxide varistors are used in household surge suppressors in conjunction with a small breaker to limit the voltage & trip themselves to protect whatever is connected to them.
There are different kinds of lightning arrestees. MOVs that you describe are the most common, especially for consumer electronics. High voltage applications can have other kinds, such as gas-gap or air gap.
I'm not a linesman or electrician here in Victoria Australia But always been extremely amazing by it all I've learnt soo much from a friend who was a electrician and another who worked in the railways I've learnt soo much Our tram system runs 660 to 700v DC and the suburban train system runs 1500v DC to 24 kV AC and soo much other and watching all your videos is very interesting Also I have seen RU-vid videos of transformers over heating and explode in a massive fire ball Seeing that for real you would need to change your underwear I bet LOL
Bro ,I'm working on a song to thank the lineman and the crew and everyone involved. I got a shout out to Bobdecline in it. Stay safe and thank you bro.
The gauges indicate the position of the taps at a glance. There are also smaller dials which show the lowest and highest taps reached since they were last reset. 3:10 Just behind Aaron, you can see the tap position indicator (the thicker dial) just to the right of center. You can see the other two smaller dials indicate the lowest and highest positions the tap has been automatically changed to through the time since it was last reset.
As a kid I witnessed a transformer blow up. A bad thunderstorm came thru the area. I think between the lightning strike that hit the pole and a near by tree it damaged the transformer. It sparked, buzzed, flashed, then exploded into a fire ball. It looked like the top blew off and went flying. Me and another neighborhood kid where watching it from about 30 to 40 yards away. When the linemen should up and they realized we were nearby watching. One of them came over and asked us why we were out in the rain. After we told him about what we had witnessed he filled us in on the dangers of the power system and how risky it was for us to be so close. The brief explanation of the dangers had stuck with me for years. I really enjoy the videos because I like learning new things. Be safe out there. P.S. I had a friend of mine work for Duke-Energy in and around upper part of South Carolina in the U.S.A.. His hair had turned white as a ghost after 30 plus years working the line. Is it something that is common or was it just a odd coincidence?
Just a maintenance electrician and have no intention of messing distributing with high voltage or being a linemen electrician, I give you credit for your job and enjoy watching your shows, keep up with the good work.
This is one of the most explanatory videos Ive ever seen, explaining a powergrid. You have a way with words and you are a very intelligent man. You should retire early and teach a younger generation your profession. You would be a great teacher.
Arrestors are even cooler than just plain resistors....meet our wonderful friend, the Metal Oxide Varistor! An MOV is basically a block of semiconducting crystals sintered together that presents itself as a very high impedance across the line under normal conditions when the voltage across the MOV is below a magical threshold called the clamping voltage. Above the clamping voltage, the MOV RAPIDLY (Less than a few nanoseconds!) becomes a low impedance path. This often wrecks the MOV but saves the downstream load. In short (pun intended), MOVs relocate the "kaboom" to a more convenient, less costly location. MOV end of life behaviors: They'll either blow apart and fail open or they'll fail "leaky" and conduct some current but not full fault current. If the varistor doesn't burn away and go open, it will progress to a fault and blow the supply fuse. In small arrestors that may be near building materials and plug-in type suppressors used indoors, this leaky failure mode constitutes a serious fire hazard and is the reason we have standards like UL1449 which mandate thermal cutouts be placed near the MOVs. Down here in Texas with all the storms we get in the Dallas area, I've seen more than my share of blown apart MOVs in my electronics repair business but the damage to the device equipped with an MOV is usually far less severe than those without. (one is usually economical to repair, the other....much less so!)
I really like your two way radio setup with the speaker behind you I listen to a lot of the electric company during bad weather events it's interesting one the dispatcher announces the substation is about to be energized
I had a transformer blow a few years back during a lightning storm after a lightning strike. Bright green light, and then all that oil oozing from around the seal at the top. Earlier this year Edison had to come out and replace everything on the pole. Electric bill went down 30 bucks a month afterwards. In 30 years they have replaced 3 transformers. We are in a lightning prone area. Enjoy the videos...
"Electric bill went down 30 bucks a month afterwards." Was your meter upstream of the transformer ? Otherwise it should have made no difference. The meter runs on the power you consume. Nothing to do with the transformer.
I started watching recently, and I've actually been able to identify a *lot* of power equipment in my local area- but those capacitors has me seriously stumped for a while! Had no idea what they were until today. A particularly interesting thing to me that I feel is worth mentioning; it sounds like this isn't really a thing much in your jurisdiction, but down here we actually have full gang switches on the three-phase distribution lines! There's four of them within a half-dozen spans of each other going up the hill where I live, one of which is open by default- probably for alternate feed purposes. I'm actually not really sure why there's so many of them here; the first one that's normally open is fairly easy, but two of the other three are positioned after major neighborhood entrances, usually a pole or two after a set of cutouts for underground power to the neighborhood in question, with the third all the way at the top of the hill. My best guess is they're for isolation/protection point purposes, but I don't really know why you'd need so many in such a small distance for that. (For perspective on exact distances, it's about 1 mile/1.6 km from the open switch at the bottom of the hill to the final switch at the top. Most of these switches didn't even exist until last year; parts of the line running up the hill were recent additions, as it wasn't continuous previously.)
Awesome video. I'm not in the electrical trade, but as a former engineer I still think like an engineer, and it has been fascinating watching your vids and learning more about the equipment. Keep up the great work!
Last week our neighbor's feed line (line that connects pole to meter) failed catastrophically and linemen had to cut power to whole street to isolate the problem just like described. Cut power, isolate, restore power, and then deal with the faulty line. It is a good safe way of protecting customers and electric grid equipment.
Long ago, I worked at Cooper Power Systems, a manufacturer of switchgear, "small power" transformers (ie. transmission to distribution voltage) and pole-mounted transformers. My job: manage the mini-computers that controlled the "quality assurance test cells", wherein technicians simulated lightning strikes with 100KV and 10KA to 50KA (depending on specs). The test cells were DIRECTLY above the computer room and MY office. When transformers "failed" the "lightning surge" test, the building shook, followed by a mass exodus to the bathrooms for a panty change. Independence Day fireworks, EAT YOUR HEART OUT!
That info about why transformers fail blew my mind. So back in June 2011 I lived in Mesa Arizona (25 min east of Phoenix) and was working Burger King drive thru. I saw a huge black cloud of smoke. A group of guys were ordering drinks and they were from our local power utility. They told us a transformer was on fire and they were working on it. 30 min later everything went dark and I was told to go home. 30,000 people were without power during one of the hottest times of the year.
I am a firefighter in the US. They always teach us do not touch wires even if you think you know what it is. My question is are the actual power lines typically on the top third of the pole? I feel like after awhile we can typically tell if it is a power line or cable line however we do understand that a fault could cause in some cases power to be grounded or transmitted into other lines unintentionally hence us not touching them. I still see a lot of guys say oh its just cable lets grab a pike pole and move it. Thoughts on this? I can understand where a lot of firefighters see the cable lines and just want to move them out of the roadway to get the job cleared and not waste your time coming out. But i also understand the dangers associated with electricity and why we should not be touching it even if we know what line it is.
The phrase a blown fuse comes from the way larger commercial fuses work. These fuses have a circuit in them that monitors the current going through them and when the current exceeds the fuses ratting for its rated time the circuit sends current to a small explosive charge that will blow the conducting elamit apart. So the fuse literally blew the housing of the fuse contains the charge and there is usually a little window on the fuse that will turn dark indicating it has blown.
cool videos man :) I subscribed! i'm an industrial electrician apprentice in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Fixing to start running a 750kcmil line through 5 inch rigid conduit. Looking forward to it, although I know its gonna kick my arse haha :)
I was camping out at a lake one week. The power company was just right down the road from where I was. Their power lines traveled directly over the length of the lake, while there I noticed those lines had a serious amount of buzz coming from them that fluctuated louder and softer. When they got louder the lines would move and I know that meant a heavier load was being put on those lines and the reason they were moving was they weren’t heavy enough lines for the current they were carrying which I thought that to be rather odd the power company would allow a line to stay in service when it’s not large enough to carry the current demand being placed on it. I haven’t been back to that camp ground in years so maybe they have corrected that situation. the whole time while there I could just picture one of those lines burning in half and falling into that lake so I stayed clear of it lol wanted to tell ya about that:•)
Another way to explain power factor is that some devices with poor power factor “borrow” extra power from the grid on each half cycle and temporarily store it in a magnetic (or electrostatic) field in the device, and give it back to the grid a half cycle later. All this extra current going back and forth performs no useful work, and costs the customer nothing, but it puts extra load on the grid. Those capacitors you put on the line give a small extra reserve of power on the pole for those devices to borrow from so that extra borrowed power going back and forth doesn’t have to go all the way to the substation or generating plant causing load and losses across the grid.
SUPER interesting video! A lot better understanding of what I'm looking at when waiting at a traffic light and staring at the power lines. I wanted to be an electrician, but somewhere along the lines changed paths. I still find it all very interesting though and want to learn more in case I ever want to get back into the field.
Great video! I am an Electrical Engineer and have family members who were linemen in the 60s and 70s. I loved watching them climb poles and do what they did. Question - what are those connections I see (in the country mostly) between the phase and the neutral wire every few polls. someone said they are for harmonizing, not sure what but I see a lot of them in Texas.
There are small ball looking things on Lakeland (Florida) Electric lines that tell (-tales) whether the line is energized. When current is present and you shine a light on the telltales, they brightly reflect the light. If no current is present, they are NOT reflective. How about a video discussing these telltales? Thanks!
AC power delivery is a lot like engine power delivery in a vehicle, AC power = high voltage at lower amps at the source and lower voltage higher amps at the consumer end. engine power = higher RPM's at the motor but lower power until it gets to the wheels then its lower RPM's and higher power. In the power grid it is changed via the "transformer" in the vehicle it is changed via the "transmitting". AC transition lines, vehicles drive shaft and axial s. Delivery of POWER, what a great thing !
I know where a certain pole is, in my local area, that a transformer Actually DID Explode! Sounded like a freakin' CANNON going off, about a half-mile down the road from my parents house where I grew up, accompanied by a fairly sizable flash of light!!! :O
I love these videos, so much cool information! Is there any special equipment present at Fast Charging stations for electric vehicles? It seems like some of these stations with a lot of stalls can pull over 1MW. Are these still fed with 7200v/12470v phases? If there are any of these large stations in your company's service area it might be a cool video! Watching from Upstate NY!
I used to work at a datacenter that pulled 7MW. Feed was 7200/12470 into a bank of 2.5MVA transformers and from there 277/480 into a bus and then to a bunch of 150kVA to 750kVA transformers feeding literally hundreds of 120/208 circuits for the compute racks. The cables on the pole were FAT! Cooling ran at 480V and each room had 18 computer room air conditioner (CRAC) units of 30 ton capacity each and it still got uncomfortably warm in some sections.
Old rusty cans around my area and have witnessed 1 in person and heard another and they were old in the 90s when it happened... my pressure release valve leaks after skyline chili... lol
I once saw someone open the bypass switch on a regulator while it was boosting because he forgot to manually zero/neutral it out.....he was fine, but it was quite a violent blast, not to mention he destroyed the regulator and the bypass jumper switch....woops.....
Star Gazer he may have closed it, i honestly dont remember......it was 15 years ago i was like 3 weeks into the job 😂....this guy wasn’t terribly bright and needless to say, no longer works there...all i remember is the giant arc flash it created....
I live a few blocks from the middle of nowhere in New Jersey. Every single house on our street has one of those small transformers on their pole. If there is a problem in any one of them... something pops away from our street leaving all of us "out of power". Your video explained everything extremely well. Thank you! (also explains why when our linemen come... it's fixed in minutes)
What happens during an EMP attack or "Carrington event" to the transformers and ancillaries? How long would it take for all the damage to be repaired? Great videos mate, i love all the nuts and bolts explanations.
That's scary stuff man! Transformers can be damaged beyond repair in mass amounts. Distribution units aren't hard to change.. large power transformers are a whole other story. The issue wouldn't be with repairs, more so in acquiring the replacements. I'd like to read up some more on this stuff, I'm not sure if CME's would also affect relays and other equipment or not
@@Bobsdecline Carrington event of the 1800's was really severe. The sky was so bright at night, people thought it was morning. Telegraph operators across the continental US were being shocked by their equipment even though the batteries had been disconnected from the telegraph systems. I think the Pentagon has said that EMP attack would cause 90% fatalities in 12 months (loss of services and supply chains) and it would take at least 5 years to replace the very large transformers destroyed by either scenario.
You'll know by 2025, sun is still amping up. In the antarctic they were seeing auroras in the sky, under a full moon, and some just after sunset, last week. Lots of spare energy out there. We are getting some visible at lat. 35S. Time: May 2023
They are tied together at many points, but mostly only on the Transmission side. The Power is then bought and sold much like a stock market. Sometimes it's cheaper to buy power during peak times or emergencies then to produce.
I have two questions: 1.why do you mostly work alone why not in pairs? Here in Serbia I am pretty sure that the rule is that you need to have at least two workers on sight especially when working in substations. 2.I noticed that most of the faults that you have filmed are on primary side so I'm wondering do you have more calls for high voltage than low voltage repairs?
Hey Mihailo! Awesome hearing all the way from Serbia ✌️ We have a very specific list of tasks we are allowed to preform while alone. A lot of these tasks have "check in" protocol. The substation for example - even to simply go inside the gates we must check in upon entry and upon leaving. If ever I request a second man on site for safety, I have never been refused. We are also aloud to re fuse and close cut outs alone, but not allowed to work on them. A good rule of thumb for our guidelines is if ever the equipment was energized above 600 volts, a second man is required. We are allowed to climb alone, but often times call for backup depending on the circumstances and once again are never refused the help. I probably get more calls on Secondary actually. The reason most videos are filmed during primary work, is I am often waiting for back-up to arrive.I use that idle time to explain some of our procedures while not interfering with restoration time. It's also easier to gain footage on primary rural lines where I don't have to worry about editing out sensitive/private images. (All editing is later completed while off duty) I do have this video here: m.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-y5LbfQ9cyjk.html&t And hope to soon have more when filming is appropriate.!👊👊🍻
Great video, sir! 10:50 When you hook up that single phase transformer, does it make a difference which of the three primary lines you chose to use? Thanks!
Hey Fred! It doesn't really matter in most cases. We try and balance the load however... Meaning equal amount on each phase. Sometimes we'll also use a particular phase as an express line to a particular neighborhood. As the system is designed our engineering Dept usually indicate on work orders which phase to use.
True Fact: Florida experiences more lightning strikes than anyplace else in the USA ('cept Texas), so FPL (Florida Power and Light) always bought the CHEAPEST and LEAST efficient distribution transformers; they knew they'd lose a LOT every summer, so they didn't waste money on high efficiency. (The equpiemnt wouldn't last long enough to recoup the higher capital cost before experience a "Real Life Lightning Surge Event." (ie. Don't buy your 16-year-old a brand new corvette and expect HIGH RESALE value.)
My father and myself had the opportunity to scrap metal at a power plant and they asked if we wanted a couple old transformers we ended up not taking them because of the oil inside of them is really hard to dispose of mostly it’s really expensive to have it disposed of properly they was the old transformers that had some type of toxic oil in it the newer ones have a mineral oil in them
Do you ever have to upgrade transformers with larger ones in areas that were built in say the 50s and 60s because of load growth? A friend of mine lives in a house built in the 60s--none of the houses there were built with air conditioning but they all have it now. The transformer size was never increased---it was a 25kVA transformer feeding 4 houses! ..and it blew one day. Apparently they replaced it with another 25kVA and it blew again, so they put a bigger one in. Been fine since. By way of comparison, my house (built in 2017) has a 37.5kVA transformer and it only feeds my house. My house has a heat pump with electric backup heat so that maybe why it's that big.
Yes! This is a rather big problem actually! Technically when a house installs a large heating unit, or converts from an alternative source to electric.. we are supposed to have been made aware through means of permits. This allows us to make necessary changes to equipment in the field. Unfortunately when entire blocks install mini heaters, the load quickly ads up and can wreak havoc on our system!
@@Bobsdecline I've often wondered if this would be a problem when EVs hit the tipping point with long range and low enough cost, especially for rural homes. Come home and plug in your car, turn on the heat or A/C, start laundry, cooking, etc When I've brought this question up in EV debates I'm always told "no there's plenty of unused capacity everywhere and they charge at night with lower peak draw" but it seems like at night is when you'd have peak consumption (especially with electric heat that is common in rural areas) I think the peak usage without any EVs I've seen at the place we rent is around 45kW on winter evenings. Dual heat pumps with 10kW aux heat each (and runs non-stop if we get a cold-spell below 20F), 4kW hot water heater, well water pump, electric oven, electric range, electric clothes drier...plus all the other various things in a home lights, heated aquariums, computers, portable heaters, etc. Not sure how big the transformer is at the end of the driveway but it looks like it's got 2 sets of wire on the secondary so I assume it's feeding us and our next door neighbor.
@@Bobsdecline What do you think is going to happen when all these companies that ordered Tesla Semis try to hook up the Megachargers that draw 2 MW for each charging stall? Semi is supposed to have a 1 MWh battery, and Musk claims a 30 minute charge time, so that's a 2MW charge rate. I think everyone is in for a big surprise.
@@matthewmiller6068 that is definitely an issue. However EVs could also use the extra energy produced by renewable energy like solar that is currently often there in excess. However for that they would need to be more "intelligent" then current EVs. Here in Germany that is widely discussed. However I somewhat doubt that it can use the solar energy very well. At noon, basically every is at work, and probably won't charge his car. Most cars will get charged at night.
@@matthewmiller6068 Probably load management switches could be used to control when the EVs charge. The local utility here already uses them (and has been for over 30 years) for air conditioners and water heaters at the customer's request--they will repair any electrical problems with the water heater, no charge, and send someone out to troubleshoot air conditioner problems, no charge, in return for having a load management switch. Regarding aux heat, I installed a toggle switch between the W wire of my thermostat and the heat pump. This disables aux heat unless I want to enable it. It will still come on when the heat pump is in defrost, but not otherwise. I installed that switch three years ago and I have not had to turn it on yet. I found that the thermostat I have is really stupid about using aux heat and I suspect that's true of most of them. It will turn on aux heat when it is definitely not needed.
A few weeks ago, an ice storm hit the city that I live in. Over the course of about a day, I got about 8 momentary outages. Now that I've watched this video, I can better understand that each outage was a fuse blowing somewhere nearby, and then the substation teleruptor resetting. Eventually, the power went out for my house entirely, and it took a few days for them to get it back. About 15 minutes after it was restored, there was a loud electrical noise outside, followed by a blackout. Few seconds later, the power came back on, electrical noise, and went out again for the last time. When I went outside, the power pole at the cross street was about a third it's original height, dangling in the air, the transformer shattered, and the cables feeding my neighborhood draped across the ground. At the time, I had assumed that the momentary power we got was the electricity somehow rerouting itself, but now that I've watched this video... Those cables on the ground had re-energized briefly! (I'm guessing there wasn't a fuse between that pole and the substation?) I'm surprised nobody got hurt, if I'm totally honest! Feel free to correct me if I got something wrong. I wish it were appropriate to go out and watch the Linemen and ask questions while they worked so that I could get a better understanding.
Sounds to me like you got it right. Yes, power lines on the ground can certainly be re-energized. That's why it's very important to say away from them! Even if you think they're dead, they can come back to life and get you.
@JadonGamer Indeed. You know what _is_ a problem in the US though? detroit.cbslocal.com/2019/11/27/woman-accused-of-firing-shots-at-workers-150-feet-up-cellphone-tower/ smh
A month ago a weird thing happened me. I live in a four story building. After a storm at 9 PM we lost one phase of our power. Half of my condo lost power and the other half remained on. I talked to all my neighbors and they experienced the same thing. I have a 220v wall mounted heater box in the bathroom with a digital display and it was indicating "low voltage" error. I would assume one of the two 110v lines that feeds in our breaker box was lost and the breakers on that side went dead. About 7 hours later all the power went out including the streetlights. About 10 minutes later they came back on and 30 minutes later we got all of our power back full. Your suggestions are welcome. Love your blogs.
I have had "lost phase" problems several times in commercial buildings I've worked in. Usually what happens is one of the three primary wires failed. Your condo is probably in a building wired for 3 phases, but only 2 of them are brought to each unit. This setup gives you 208V phase-to-phase instead of the 240V you get with "center tapped neutral"/"split-phase". Your power probably went out completely because they had to shut everything off to safely repair the broken phase.
I would think taking the case's temperature remotely with infrared thermometer, checking recorded temp. with OEM chart of temperatures, might be instructive as to whether it is ready to come apart at the seams.
