Why the Lights Went Out

[DanteVergilfan]

Nice fireworks.....

[keithp74]

Ahhhhhh gotta love that open wire.......

[joshthesupertagger]

00:05 to 00:09 The power lines play a beat! :D

[forneau]

As the video title shows, this is Burlingame CA which is about 15 miles south of San Francisco close to the bay. This was somewhat of a freak storm, but these can occur during the rainy winter season.

[Crossroadsinc]

Where exactly do you live in Cali that you get 65mph winds???

[bansheemike]

why would 2 switches have been powing 1 tranny?

[ApolloWasReal]

@bansheemike It's standard practice in California to wire transformers phase-to-phase on the primary side rather than phase-to-neutral as in most of the country. This requires a fuse for each hot wire. I'm not sure why this is done, but I suspect it has something to do with concerns over grounding integrity.

[Sidewinder9877]

Is this a phase-to-phase fault?

[bansheemike]

@Sidewinder9877 just looks like the open wire bus was slapping together.. so just 120-240 volts

[syikie]

Sooo... you are filming a powerline the whole day till something like that happens... yeah that makes sense...

[forneau]

@syikie That is inaccurate. As I stated in the original post, I had taken some still shots (actually from inside the house through a window), and then I heard noises again. So I put the camera, a Canon PowerShot, into movie mode and stood on my porch, peeking around the corner and caught the fireworks. I was not "filming the powerline the whole day" as you suggest. This is a 21-sec clip that was not edited.

[Snoep76239]

@forneau I film the powerlines all day and never had such good luck! LOL Cool footage, thankx.

[gocountry1391]

oh i know now!!! thanks for showing me!!!

[Riot454di]

Took a while for the HV fuses to go

[the67go]

ko

[Againya23]

Ohhhhh so that why, I was freaked out.

[stressstressstress]

And then the Terminator appeared !

[StrangerUnidentified]

Wow nice to get this on video

[chrisrambodiskjockey]

actually it blew both fuses. if you look at the right hand fuse you hear 2 pops and can see the right hand fuse fall out as well and then the left one blows

[1232748]

Disco !! :D

[CoolioRockstar]

That is super Cool!

[8534951]

fireworks

[gunta68]

fire works :D

[cop889900]

wow cool fireworks lol

[kwk86mcss]

Triplex secondaries > Open wire

[alex054739]

Man, fuses are shit...

Canada and America uses them?

WTF this is so fuckin old tech

[xXjose130Xx]

@alex054739 I guess it's because breakers for these voltages would be too expensive and probably big

en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Fuse_(electrical)#Hig­h_voltage_fuses :

"A circuit breaker at 115 kV may cost up to five times as much as a set of power fuses, so the resulting saving can be tens of thousands of dollars. Pole-mounted distribution transformers are nearly always protected by a fusible cutout, which can have the fuse element replaced using live-line maintenance tools."

[alex054739]

@xXjose130Xx lol funny such small country as Israel uses them :') not fuses.

[xXjose130Xx]

@alex054739 And i just found that there are infact circuit brekers for high voltages, like this one :

engineering.electrical-equipme­nt. org/electrical-distribution/hi­gh-voltage-circuit-breaker-is-­the-best.html

[kormannn1]

круче будет 800 гц,и тперь понятно почему в пятигорске иногда случаются выключение компа,свет и теликов!

[itsJohney]

fireworks!!!

[MrDoulikepancakes]

and i thought hollywood lied....

[MADdrummer971]

good thing that capacitor didnt blow

[energyDie]

Yay!, fireworks

[ljmike1204]

4 of julie fire wurks

[fergzzag]

4 de julio

[TheHackWhite]

thoes are fireworks!

[angrycanadian8]

it sounds like popcorn or fireworks!

[MagicGuru88]

@ventures58

Ok. I'm liberal. But this is just stupid.

[92sweetiq]

Sounded like fireworks!]

[Xx12ker]

Looks like FireWorks

[letseeitplease]

kind of looked like the powerpoles where trying to have sex with each other, they kept Shooting Off,,,, sparks,,,,,,,,,,, lmao

[BostonUrbEx]

Well, that's one way to celebrate 4th of July.

[driver64]

the problem is the absurd muddled live threads,,now in europe ever 220 V country lines cables are insulated or undergrounded and in the past I never seen such tangled junctions-Sometime USA seems well a third world county.

[skull2666]

someones coming back from the future in a time machine.

[thordaddy9]

thats just open wire secondires

[denelson83]

Looks like a phase-to-phase short.

[MusicWavesMan]

idk what that is exactly but you are probably right

[vesjjblesjj]

oeioei xd er moeten betere monteurs komen ;p  Cheezz (:

[TwapsDutch]

inderdaad

[sonicspeedway89]

you can see the fuse pop at 0:17-:18 on the pole...

[hootergirlsrhot]

about 50,000 volt fireworks

[bigjohn68040]

@hootergirlsrhot it's probably only 4800 volts at the top and the wires you see arcing are 120/240 volts.

[fairyheli2]

in england we have 240 volt for domestic use, and 450 volt as three phase

[Nivicoman]

@fairyheli2 funny how in the US 240 volts is phase to phase for heavy appliances and your 240 volts is phase to neutral for all appliances. US 240 volts is generally split phase 240 with center tap for 120 volts. In the US 240 volts 3 phase is found but rare 480 or 208 3 phase are most common.

[bigdaddynate1024]

And the voltage that is making the "Fireworks" is only 120/240....That is the same voltage the supplies everything in your house.

[MiniMrGzus]

I think somone may need to take a look at that wire haha

[dogboy858]

lol free fireworks

[100000000years]

nice firework

[joshypower]

Ich frage mich, wieso es da keine Sicherungen gibt, die den Strom automatisch abschalten, wenn es einen Kurzschluss gibt.

[forestgumpaed]

no tv tonight.

[someone7272]

Anyone for fireworks?

Seriously, that's a very high voltage.

[andyb521740]

those are the secondaries off the transformer which is 240v single phase. Just normal household voltage.

[ARR016a]

FAIREWERKS!!!!!!

[Cotcodaq]

fireworks:))

[ErnieHam]

i'm hate singapore, where i cant see this kind of good stuffs, all the electricity cables and located under singapore.

[bikegeekccp]

Looks like something that would happen over here in NC. On Duke Power's older lines, they have the lines coming from the transformers exposed in a delta system, pretty much as it is here. What happened in the video is probably the reason why they put a stop to designing their lines like this. It's probably easier to run the lines like this, but it plays a bigger risk when nature goes bad, especially when the fuse coming from the main line to the transformer doesn't blow...

[kelljm]

open wire secondaries...a hoppin and poppin!

[Kartracer087]

Most distribution are fed by Grounded Y transformers at the substation. This is to help quickly clear faults under ground fault conditions among other things. In CA from what I've seen, a lot of their feeder lines (12kv, 16kv, 35kv) are three phase three wire with single phase transformers mounted phase to phase. Some neighborhoods bring out a neutral wire to get a 3 phase 4 wire service. In this case, you can mount single phase transfromers phase to neutral.

[Salty123123]

like firecrackers

[form109]

what are you talking about??...90 Kv Lines?

[animallover017]

at :18 you can see the left hand fuse blow after the last pop

[quantumbits]

@animallover017 Yes, and Actually you can see two fuses blow. Apparently the transformer is across two phases....

also it seems to be an old style secondary wiring.

[ApolloWasReal]

@animallover017 Sure enough, I didn't notice that until you pointed it out. Thanks.

[form109]

maybe they should Add a little Tension or increase the Distance between the wires to prevent them from Slapping into Each other in a Stiff Breeze.

[guguigugu]

you really shoud have called the electric company. this is very very wrong.

[Weallfalldown6]

I'm sure they did...

[itsCATURAY]

what happened anyway? why'd it start sparking?

[Peter4101]

Arcing is some serious stuff. Lucky it was only the power & not him

[gunnii01]

Nice "Firework" - just like happy new Year!

[jediforce64]

you guys got electirccal problems

[Andis345]

i believe the primary is a 3 phase delta system. Only because the transformer is wired phase to phase with 2 cutouts.

[inventormaker]

what do you use to add the titles and the thing at the bottom of the video

[forneau]

That video was edited using iMovie on the Mac. I uploaded it from my camera and then used iMovie to trim the beginning and ending. Then added the opening title screen, and added the title banner at the bottom of the movie.

[pastorgeorgem]

@forneau that explains it a mac even though I do not like them personally they are good for editng

[ABZ6381]

those things that fell loose on top of the pole are cutout fuses right?

[forneau]

Actually, you can see the hookup wires to the cutout fuses popping and separating right at the end! I was kind of hiding on the porch, just peeping around the corner far enough to capture the video... be careful if you try to film this sort of thing!

[helicoptered]

Aww, Bless was you a bit scared of the high voltage...

[lighter666]

im from the bay area and do linework. i was working this storm. we had lines down in Burlingame, South city, SF, Pacifica and all over. i made a lot of overtime that week

[forneau]

grateful for your help during this storm which I still remember well -- I saw you folks doing your job under these harsh conditions and say thanks.

[rawtorque]

I'm in San Jose, so thanks for the PG&E work. The big storm in '95 was even worse; They had some 500KV towers knocked down in that!

[gobouille]

its a firework (un feu d'artifice)

[gjgjkg]

haha nice firework display :)

[08376]

omg.... the richest country in the world cant afford isolation? in Holland we dont even have those wires above the ground. only for the really big powerlines and they are routed 500 meters high over places were nobody is and even those are isolated.

[wamaweur]

It is not 500 meters, but 50 meters.

And there is no insulation on the wire.

only insulators between wire and pylon.

[syndrom453]

Its like a great light show!

[Alvinwhatup2]

how did you know that was gonna happen and catch it on tape?

[forneau]

The sparks had been happening for some time already, and I had been taking some still images. Then I decided to use the movie mode of the camera and got lucky! I wasn't expecting the final breakdown of the fuses, and it was pretty scary when it happened.

[jaholmes01]

Yeah, cool. You can actually see the expulsion fuses pop down there at then end and swing lifelessly. I wouldn't have thought those low-voltage lines would be uninsulated, but I guess they are; it was obviously the 120/240V stuff arcing.

[forneau]

Thanks for the comments. I noticed that after PG&E fixed it, they placed some insulating twist-tie like spacers to separate the lines that arced. They probably never expected the force of the wind to cause the lines to touch.

[juglem]

Unbelievable! - Sam