Added: 4 years ago
From: bpdoyle17
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  • Good catch. Normaly I dont see when a 3p dip goes bad.

  • it looks like me when I'm having an orgasm!

  • R.I.P. He stood no chance.

  • a car appeared when it blew up :O

  • First I would like to point out that this is not a transformer exploding, it is a primary riser. Which takes the primary overhead to underground.  And it has either gone phase to phase or phase to ground. Second the bright flashes and loud booms that everyone talks about are not transformers exploding, but fuses being blown over a transformer or down the line some where.

  • @josiahmsanders That's very interesting, I always wondered why something like that would explode, I'm glad that it doesn't.

  • kablooi!!!!!!!!!!!wow!!

  • The guy parking was funny...However, there was no transformer on that pole. Just overhead-to-underground junctions, one phase having faulted.

  • snow plus fire equals snowball target practice

  • There goes the engine

  • epic fail at 2:10

  • This was certainly an entertaining video.

  • The window is much more evil than the transformer... but anyway ;)

  • 0:38 KA-BEWM

  • It looked like a small Nuclear Bomb at 0:36.

  • you should turn off all the breaker switches when something like that happens

  • This looks like soviet russia

  • That's not a transformer exploding. It is simply a high voltage arc with fire.

  • america with their fucked up electricity network :)

  • my mom sis and i were driving on the way to school for the fcats and the fuckin transformer exploded 10 feet away from us and we almost flipped the car! are car got electricuted!!!!!

  • From what I understand, there is an oil like fluid insude the transformer that acts as an insulator, and in cold environments when that fluid gets thick , it no longer insuates the transformer and it explodes. This happened a few days ago right by my house. I was sitting in my car and I saw a bright blash, which I though was someone taking a picture, and then a loud BANG. I found out later a transformer had exploded. This was in Arizona. Which is theoretically a desert. 

  • 1:04 WHAT THE---

  • where is this at?

  • This just happened next to my house

  • BEATIFUL!!!!!!!

  • i remember one night, one blew up as i was driving away in the opposite direction and all i saw was a very bright flash of neon green. my 4 year old cousin was convinced that aliens have finally arrived.

  • Chuck Norris just turned on his heater...

  • I see some people are adding to the problem.... dumbasses.

  • After the explosion at 0:38, it broke the street light on it!

  • A transformer blew near my house last night but it was across the highway. Very loud buzz sound i heard and looked outside and the pole was lit up, it finally went out by itself but i didnt lose power on my side. Idk why it happened.

  • what you saw most likely was what we call a feeder dip shorting out. The dip probably isnt fused at the pole. What happens is the fault current from the short travels all the way back to the sub station and trips a breaker. It will trip 2 or 3 times before locking out. this is a process we call reclosing. that is why you see 2 large arcs. the short was probably located where the 3 cables come together into a pipe on the pole.

  • no transformer just fused cutouts blowing, i have been 6 feet away throwing them in when they blow...

  • there was no transformer, it was just the fuses blowing... they act like a circuit breaker in your house... when there is too much voltage, or a short circuit or another problem... BOOM!!! i work for national grid in upstate NY

  • I love explosions. Especially one where no one gets hurt.

  • check out the hypersonics when it explodes, blindin light then pitch black :L

  • hay i live a few miles away from here i don't remember this and that is not a transformer, that is a pole where the 3 phase power goes underground

  • hay i live a few miles away from here i don't remember this

  • haha yea the guy at the end was so happy till he saw what was fuckin happening

  • Soooooo pumpmypedal..wtf is a fire crew going to do with high voltage ??? Jesus please for the good of all mankind, engage brain prior to mouth !

  • wow..."MMMMZUMP...BOOF!"

  • lol it arced to the street light phase and exploded the bulb forcing the lens open.

    you guys are lucky it didn't arch to the phase supplying your house that would have been good bye to anything switched in/plugged in to the wall.

  • @ratbag359 Speaking of exploding bulbs, I had a 277 volt neon pilot light arc over internally and blow the bulb and lens right out of the housing. All that was left was the casing and lead wires. It had lit up fine prior to my shutting off the unit I was testing. I turned it back on POW! Wonder if a spike arced it over inside the unit was connected to a 480-600 volt step up xfmr which was fed by my variac. I bet turning on the transformer breaker with the unit breaker closed made a spike.

  • Fucking hell i wouldn't be going anywhere near that thing.

  • 38 seconds in wholly crap! then again at 54 seconds.. I have seen a couple of transformers pop, its interesting but I wouldn't want to be underneath one when it goes..

  • cool vid man! where was this shot? Looks chilly, but then again I live in southern Arizona, so we shut the town down at 60 degrees...

  • @irishimport77 its on commerical street in portland maine.

    the garge you see when he pans to the right i used to run and manage .

    the old bath iron works building is in the back the blue one

  • at 0:36 what is on the sky, are clouds?

  • @jaguarcito84 smoke

  • cool look at 0:52

  • You see the guy get out of the black sedan, look up, and his shrug tells you he is like "Ohhh WTF?' then gets back in. lol

  • @MSNIMSM lol, yeah he was totally oblivious for a sec, then luckily woke up... hehe, I laughed when I saw his reaction

  • what the hell was 1:03?

  • i think opening the window ...

  • I think the window he was opening was really creaky.

  • Awesome spark at 0:37

  • This transformer didn't "explode"; I've seen them explode, but that's very rare. Once I saw a kid throw click-clacks on a power line. It wrapped around both the 2400V (pri) and 240V (sec) lines, pulling them together until they touched, which increased the power flowing through the transformer from about 1KW to about 1MW. The top blew off and the melted core and burning coolant blew out the top. The grass below was drenched with burning PCBs, and the lid came down and smashed a tree.

  • Unlikely to be PCBs I'd have thought, more likely oil, the primary reason they started using PCBs is because they were non flammable (or at least significantly less flammable than oil). (Yeah, minor nit-pick and I don't mind being proved wrong if I am, but that was my understanding of why PCBs were used instead of oil for a while).

    Then of course they found out that PCBs had those nasty side effects!

  • Ah, good point; different substances have been used as transformer coolant liquids over the years. I should have said "coolant" to be safe. The incident I was refering to was, I think, around Feb 1976. Let me research when PCBs where used.... Yes, they were used until 1979, so the transformer I saw explode in 1976 likely did have PCBs in it. I don't know what modern transformers use.

  • at. 0:53 it looked liked a portal

  • oooooooooooooh thats fucked up

  • GAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! MY EYES!

  • i cannot believe the assholes, who drive there, see a firetruck coming and block it

    Were the fuck did they learn to drive

  • Who's blocking? The white trucks are clearly the PowerCompany. The firemen must wait for a green ligth from the power guys before they can act anyway

  • USA?

  • @MaleBretonFinn yes its the usa its commerical street by casco bay lines and casco bay garage i used to run and manage it i know that area well the feeder the short and fire was in feeds the old bath iron works building in the back round the blue building

  • @pumpmypedal

    Ei ja, die haben halt ihren Führerschein bei Neckermann auf der Rolltreppe gemacht. So was gibt's.

  • @pumpmypedal, Their driver's license are made in china

  • I heard when these things blow they give off EMP waves, is that true?

  • dunno...but all current transporting wires do create an electromagnetic field... i just don't know if the field is stronger when there's an transformer accident like that. Might be, since the arc is high current...

  • yah they did it at my school today

  • @Brianshvrs

    Two things. Firstly, has someone been watching Small Soldiers a little too much? I don't think shorting a transformer does much more than damaging it. For an electromagnetic pulse, you need something like a huge capacitor bank discharging into an electromagnet. There's no sudden power surges here, so the most this does is create a huge electromagnetic field.

    Secondly, and this is just pedantic, there's no such thing as an EMP wave. The pulse is, by definition, a pulse not a wave.

  • First, i actually have heard it from a person, not from the movie. Second, thank you for clarifying my question, although you could have just said its not true.

  • @Brianshvrs kinda. All electricty gives off an electromagnetic field, more so when they are wound in coils. Transformers are simply coils of wire transferring electricity, so they have powerful electromagnetic fields. If one exploded, then it might give off an EMP within a certain area. Good question.

  • @KittyRokher Thank-you!

  • @KittyRokher am i right in thinking the emp produced by a transformer like that would be relativity low energy im not familiar with the u.s energy grids voltage is it 230 volts to a house same as the uk ?

  • In the US, each house gets between 110-120 Volts (usually 120). If an exploding transformer gave off an EMP, it would be a very small one. Maybe everything within, say, ten feet would stop working. Then again, when one explodes, everything within ten feet is scorched!

  • @KittyRokher thnks

  • your welcome

  • Residential = 2-phase, 180deg apart, plus neutral. Most home outlets are phase-to-neutral (120VAC), but some outlets (washing machines, air conditioners) may be phase-to-phase (240VAC). Industrial/commercial is all 208volt 3-phase, 120deg apart (120V phase-to-neutral).  Outlets are either 120V-1-phase (phase-to-neutral) or 208V-2-phase (phase-to-phase), or 208V-3-phase (using all 3 phases at once to drive 3-phase motors, etc).

  • where i used to work it was 277v/480v phase to phase coming into the building with 480/240/120 step down transformers in every corner it seemed.

  • Excessive power can cause a transformer to explode, but that doesn't cause an EMP because the explosion itself is thermal/mechanical, not electrical, in nature. A transformer explosion is a BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion). The pressure increases until the container ruptures (or pressure relief device, if present, activates). The transformer in this video doesn't explode, it just arcs.  The arc causes a small EMP, yes. An explosion wouldn't, though.

  • I didn't want to get too technical, but yes, it would take an arc to make a small EMP. However, to most people that don't know much about electricity, arc=ExpLoSioN!!!! OMG!!! So, yeah, I was just trying not to arc their minds.

  • @KittyRokher : Arcs do not much resemble explosions. Those with weak education and sparse vocabulary misuse words, yes.  Calling their attention to their errors is a good thing, not a bad thing, and does not "arc" their minds in any way. And there is not OMG. OMG (aka "Yahweh", aka "Allah") is just a fictitious character, like Hank Reardon, Aragorn, or Roger Rabbit. Gods, devils, angels, and demons do not exist, any more than gnomes or elves exist.

  • Yeah, I'm an atheist. But, to many, when they see an arc, they'll just call it an electrical explosion or something lol.

  • It can be considered an explosion, as it rapidly heats up air, creating a shock wave (as in thunder).

  • @0teh0killah : No. Else we could say that you are clearly a warthog. Why? Because you have teeth, just like a warthog does; therefore you are a warthog. Epic fail on that logic. No, not everything that swims in the ocean is a hammerhead shark, not every piece of piano music is a Chopin mazurka, and not everything that makes flashes and/or bangs is an "explosion".

  • @lonewolfintj shut the fuck up already dickmouth! damnit man.

  • @BigBoiJC

    You best be trolling man xD

  • Wow! this is crazy!

  • Comment removed

  • it could be an overload condition caused a high current and over heat in the distribution transformer

    but crap it is freezing out there there must be something ales cause this maybe a failure in the transformer protection system or a bad design for the secondary distribution system.

  • after the first explosion theres something to the left dangling.

    Fucking knew that it was a squirrel

  • That's the cover of the street light, not a squirrel.

  • whhaaaaaat freakin sounds :D

  • where happened this? and what voltage was?

  • Lol the sound of window

  • Holy shit, that window scared me :D

  • der is gut durch

  • Bad American Power Net !

  • What voltage? 10, 35kV?

  • pause exactly on 0:39 its night time :D

  • how do those things blow up anyway?

  • Many reasons, most commonly due to poor maintenance or vandelism.

  • they have some kind of oil or something in them that can explode when heated i think.

  • ya the oil is used for cooling

  • @someguy19x they have oil i them to cool them down ma frend works for the nationol grid thats what he told me...

  • the Explosion at 0:38 Blew the Refractor Door on the streetlight wide open!

  • yeah it did

  • God that window needs WD-40!

  • You can clean glass with WD40? I didn't know, have to try it.

  • I was talking about the window squeaking so bad.

  • Most people have no idea what kind of energy flows through those normally 'quiet' wires which casually run through our neighborhoods! Note how at 0:35, during that fault, the vibration is so great, it knocks the streetlight on the same pole open!

  • There are no transformers on that pole. The "explosions" are a result of the flames (plasma) making a conductive path between two of the three power phases. Probably tripped the breaker at the nearest substation after the last "explosion".

  • You're Polish... that explains it

  • Yes, it is. It's a polemount transformer for bringing line voltage down to house voltage.

    I'm guessing that the line voltage is something like 22kv, maybe 14kv. Usually it's in a range around that, and then they bring in 2 phase, 3 wire power to the house.

  • One went out at our school during picture day and was out for 2 hours

  • a transformer exploded down the sreet from my school i was outside in the morning just before i was about to open the door i heard two what sounded like a shotgun was a transformer it was so damn loud and the powwer of the whole school blacked out for 10 seconds

  • lol the lights went out

  • Move your POS Jetta dude.

  • dont fuck with electricity

  • lmao the fire department "get your dam car outa here"

  • holy fuc. thats 3rd one.. HUGE and the 4th.. god thats crazy!!!!

  • I shit my pants on the second explodionz.

  • And by the 3rd Explosion i be grabbing a wire...lmao

  • Dude by the 2nd explosion, i wouldn't be standing inside the house.

  • nothing wrogn with standing inside. as long as he not using a land connected line.

  • ROFLL

    That's a tesla coil from red alert

  • How do these things happen with eltric poles?!

  • like everything, equipment will become faulty, thats why they have power linemen

  • Bet the guy in the red truck spilled his coffee or something

  • Oh forgot i thought transformers has fuses.

  • great capture 5*

  • 1.21 gigawatts!!!!

  • Must be 25 kV arc.

  • it screwed up ur camra

  • Comment removed

  • There was a fuse that blew out by the transformer at :40 seconds

  • Actually that looks like a street light that's attached to the pole. The hinged cover that you open to access the lamp blew open.

  • Deterioration of the infrastructure, man

  • Good job on the vid.. perfect timings..

  • Haha I know, it scared me half to death.

  • Haha that red truck was freaking out.

  • :54 nuclear baby!!!!

  • if you watch the fire and see how it is getting bigger, these transformer has oil inside them to keep the coil cool so it will not overheat and causing an outage, when these transformer ages, the seals on the bottom of the casing can deteriorate and will cause the oil to leak out, and when it gets low on oil... it can overheat, it will have a transformer failure, causing sparks and fire, and will cause power outages, we had one that leaked all its oil and starting to smoke and sparks with fire

  • Maybe it is the way the transformers are made, or, perhaps they become overloaded, such as 40-year old transformer subjected to more and more drain increasing in over the years. I am glad that more equipment is now required to be as efficient as possible, even if it costs more, and that many people and companies are finding ways to do the same job with less electricity. It is a small start for a large problem.

  • lol u could see the light in the window go out every time it sparks

  • a fire started from fireworks where i live and 1 of those exploded it was awsome

  • EXCELLENT Video.

    5 Stars

  • No transformer on this pole . . . this is a lateral dip (overhead distribution to underground distribution). Still very cool!

  • Well said... that's what I see.

    Kool bro.

  • I could pee on that little fire to put it out

  • No you can't. Pee conducts electricity. and you get fried:(

  • lol you know that dude in the truck at 0:54 just about shit himself!

  • Look at the street light next on the pole. After the discharge at 39 seconds into the video, the cover on the streetlight (the one usually opened to change the bulb) flies open. That is a HUGE amount of energy being released.

  • Hey you're right! That lightbulb must have exploded in that blast! Normally those covers are screwed in place I believe.

  • Its not the light bulb. no sparks come from the light fixture. I believe that it is the shear force from the blast-wave of the exploding pole transformer that knocks open the street light.

  • I'm glad that happened up high and not on the ground! Someone could have gotten himself badly injured if a blast like that happened on ground level.

  • Sorry, it the camera's automatic aperture that causing the change in screen brightness and color. When there's an explosion (bright flash) the aperture closes down to compensate for the increase in brightness and opens up when the flash subside. Nothing to do with emp (electro magnetic pulses).

  • did anyone see the lights go out and come back on when it sparked first time?

  • That squawkin window hurt my ears more than the transformer! haha! May I suggest oiling it? :)

  • jeeez that window sounded like a demon being cast out. scary....oh lol that guy that parked there

  • Where is this?

  • What I wanna know is....Is the computer room still running?.....?

  • If you look closely, the streetlight gets fried also (door flies open).

  • there are chemtrails in the sky

  • oh yeah, and the wicked squeak from the window opening scared the piss out of me more than the damn explosion! W-D that thing!

  • why does the sky keep changing color??

  • because everytime the transformer arks it sends out a emp and messes up the camras color system

  • gotcha. also after a few viewings, i realized is *was* the whole frame changing color, not just the sky. you can see it in the snow, and the white car as well.

    still a fabulous explosion, though!! btw, this is tiffany, jeff's friend.

  • electrical fire: confirmed for delivery, fire department paid locally!!

  • Cool!

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