It never ceases to amaze me how on all these transformer/power line videos, everytime the recloser trips and it flashes, the ENTIRE screen lights up like daylight from how bright it is. Reminds me of the danger and power of electric....
I saw one of these blow up like that suddenly at night right as i came around the corner of a building i heard a noise, looked up and boom, i was literally blind for the rest of the night. I thought it was going to be permanent.
I had a vanilla scented candle that was shipped in a nice glass jar. Once I used it all I wanted to use the jar to store some stuff. I cleaned it out but it had an aluminum wick holder that was hot glued to the bottom of the jar. To melt the glue I stuck it in a microwave and it made a sound just like that. It flashed a few times too. Did the trick though the wick holder popped out and the hot glue and wax residue wiped right off.
This happened to me last night when I was sitting at an intersection. Power lines flew everywhere. People where panicking. Luckily the power lines didn't land on us. Very scary.
Great visual & audio reference for effects artists. Thanks for recording this. I remember driving right by one in a storm when lighting hit it and boy did that baby POP!
Exactly what it is, transformer is lower on the pole, a transformer literally explodes because the coil is submerged in oil to help dissipate heat, when it goes up, the oil does too
@@cancelhandles Go watch some videos of linemen working on this kind of stuff! I could be wrong about it being a fuse, but it is most definitely not the transformer faulting here transformers don't get hooked up on that cross beam up there, they get hooked up lower down the pole. And due to their job they're pretty large, so. Below where it's arcing it looks like there is one potentially, but that doesn't explode. If I had to take a guess a fuse failed to fail correctly and ended up melting and arcing a lot. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-yi1Uh7BByQA.html This is how I believe they should fail But I'm no lineman! I just like to watch the videos!
Literally got my electricity back and came here, mine kept exploding multiple times during the evening and night. Line workers were here all night fixing the issues, shoutout to them
A transformer blowing up is really quite a show. I remember one time I was outdoors at night and witnessed one do this. It was pretty dark because the area didn’t have much light pollution. Middle of winter so everything was covered in snow. Suddenly it was daytime for about half a second. Everything being covered in snow enhanced the effect. It’s kind of terrifying for a moment until you realize what it is.
When I was in jr. high school a transformer in the substation across the street blew after it was struck by lightning. The oil inside vented and made a huge smokey fireball. Most of the time when someone thinks a transformer blew it's just a fuse blowing, when a transformer really does blow it is pretty spectacular.
This happened back in 2016 when me my dad were living with my grandparents trying to look for a new place. A tornado hit our area, had to be the worst storm I’ve been through. I was about 7 or 8 at the time. We all where heading back to the house and on the way there I made a prediction that a transformer was going to explode and fall. Turns out I predicted right. As soon as we passed a green traffic light, a transformer went Kaboom. I literally screamed like a little girl and sparks as almost 4500 degrees almost hit our car. As we passed I actually saw the transformer catch fire. Though we got pass that safety. But the nightmare didn’t stop there. We arrived at the house by the time the power was already out. We had to light candles, but the candles turned out why this nightmare hadn’t stopped. We where in the kitchen eating and without warning, a napkin was very close to one of the candles. It eventually came too close to the flame and ended up setting the napkin on fire. It actually happened right in front of me too. But dad was quick enough to grab it and get to the sink. We were very blessed to notice that in time. If nobody had noticed it in time, it might have been the house that had went down with the napkin as well.
I just had this happen last night . Imagine this being about 20-30ft outside the bedroom window at 1 AM. I woke up from I think a lightning strike and saw strobe/flashing through closed curtains . Still groggy, I opened the curtains just as the brightest explosion at the end was bursting. Literally blinded me for 5-10 sec. It was intense.
Interesting how you can see that exactly 12 seconds pass and the breakers close to see if the fault cleared itself, unfortunately it did not so they stay down.
That is actually not a transformer. It is an electrical surge protection fuse (not 100% on the techy name). It acts as any other fuse by disconnecting its current of electricity if overloaded but obviously in this case it failed to disconnect.
That's a reasonable hypothesis, yes: possibly an expulsion fuse (that's what they're called) blew, but malfunctioned, and the electricity started arcing sporadically around the blown fuse, bypassing it.
I remember a similar thing happened near my house when I was 14 or so. The transformer happened to be very close to my house so suddenly there was a sudden blaze of quite a blinding light and very loud explosive noise and for a moment I thought "oh my God! Is that a greeting from Americans?!"
I'm always intrigued about how the power seems unaffected until the electrical short blows a fuse, breaks the lines creating an open circuit or the transformer explodes. The lights in the background seem unaffected, no flickering or anything until the power is cut. Maybe it's because they're arc lamps, Sodium Vapor, Mercury vapor, etc. and the control gear filters it out. I'm pretty certain I wouldn't want my laptop plugged into the outlet while this is occurring.
Electricity isn't setup in a straight line, so its getting power from other, non-exploding transformers, we had all of our transformers blowing here in FW, TX, and lemme tell you, every light and or appliance was humming and flickering. Vid if you want: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-o5rbueQHZx8.html
Coolcat97 Metal Halide and High Pressure Sodium lamps are still arc lamps as they use an electrical arc through gas or vapor to create light. I guess "gas discharge lamps" would have been a better term. We have coated MV and HPS streetlights everywhere where I live in Australia.
Hi! Great video! I love it! So cool that you took the time to film this awesome looking transformer exploding. I'm working on a short film and would love to use this great shot. Would you be willing to give me permission to do so? If not, I totally understand. Just thought I'd ask. Thank you! :-)
I have seen one of those transformers do what this one did. It is quite a sight to see and bright as day when it goes. Plus, the lights flickered and pulsed as the transformer gasped its last.
that was a cut-out fuse that blew, but the door didn't allow the cut-out fuse to pop out and kill the circuit, causing the arc to occur, and recloser device acting weird at end
When I was younger before i move in an other house, there was a transformer right in front of my house and sometimes when we were losing power it was doing a big ‘’BOOM’’ and it was soo scary
Yes. A transformer would first be heating up, boiling the oil. Eventually, the steam that would be trapped in the housing would be building up pressure (if the housing has no vent), and then it would result in a very powerful and fiery explosion that would not only set fires to things near it, but also would produce a shockwave that can shatter windows, similar to a very powerful bomb
Had a dream about one near my school and it was shooting out lots of sparks and fire and then exploded and I woke up. The school was completely different from my irl one.
That wasn't a transformer, it was a short across the fuse that protects the downstream equipment, it arced out until the equipment disintegrated enough to no longer be able to maintain the arc.
i felt like i had this today when it occurred the room was shaking as like it was a universal studios ride i looked at my window and it was shaking there dont think i have transformers near my house
I have seen this in person many times in my area its frightening as all get out and even worse if live lines are on the ground !!!!!! glad you were safe! that was actually not as crazy as it can get , the ones i saw were VIOLENT and i mean extremely violent more than this and loud when it did explode!
In 90's I was riding on city bus in bad storm lighting hit telephone pole double trasformer a Brite explosion the turned off all electric items where also temporary off for 15 minutes
No transformer up there. Just an arc fault.Still a cool capture. Perfect example of a recloser in action. Arc jumps to another phase and trips the recloser open. Then it resets and the cycle repeats until the fault clears or the recloser locks out.
Almost the same thing happened to me the other night. Suddenly all my lights in my house started flickering and then you see sparks raining down from the pole right outside my house! It lasted 5 seconds. Crew responded 2 hours later. My neighbor had his lights go out completely for a second and then came back on. My lights just flickered.
I literally have one that’s 50 ft from my window I always worry it’s going to blow one day and scare the living crap out of me if it did this I’d be freaking
No, not by a long shot. Just one slightly-interesting video among billions. Probably about 2,395,028,485th place in quality ranking. In other words, there are billions of more-interesting videos out there for you to watch. So have fun.
thats a thermal protection fuse not a transformer lol. but thats the dangers of over 36,000 volts. it does happen and is exactly why they do not bury the wires.
jaxbeach09 I fully understand that they do for short runs only though. I once asked a lineman back in the mid 80s when I was a child and he said that if all wires from the dynamo to transmission station ( the transformers responsible for bumping current WAY up for long distances) to substation( responsible for bumping back down to distribution voltage) to pole transformer would cause so much heat that there's be fires all the time and that's why it's mostly overhead. 1/3 is basically a line going underground to the house transformer to your home ( buried cable) but I'll betcha there's a 36kv line going from your buried cable to the pole somewhere outside your establishment.
Step up transformers used for power transmission bump up voltage, not current. So current is actually decreased since voltage is increased. The reason they do this is to lower I²R power losses. 36kv is pretty high for residential transformers. Where I work we get 46kv from the power company then lower it to 11.5kv-120/240v for residential areas.
This just happened twice on my street first a car crashed into a electric pole and the transformer on bursted and then the same thing happened except no car.
That wasn't a transformer exploding, lol. That's a short circuit of some kind, which burns until it gets so much smoke it can arc to the overhead high-voltage lines, which creates a huge shower of sparks and trips the breaker for that whole section of line at the substation. A transformer exploding is like a giant gasoline bomb and doesn't happen often.
People you need to learn what a transformer is. This is not a transformer, but a fused cutout. I see this far too frequently along with people calling disconnect or isolation switches transformers. On pole transformers are rather large cylindrical metal shells and may come in singles or banks of 3 or more. Pad mount transformers are the large green boxes you see on the ground in neighborhoods where all utilities are buried. Substation transformers are a whole other beast. These are found in substations as big grey or sand colored metal boxes with large insulator towers on them and depending on style house either the mechanical arm of the isolation switch or the whip which is meant to snuff any arc. Now these substation ones do actually explode and when they do its a bleve and quite the spectacular sight. Pole transformers rarely explode, and when they do its pretty much never fiery but rather a violent discharge of the cooling oil inside of it.
