Power Plant Substation Explodes

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gobo760
February 27, 2007

On August 17th 1993, the Ives Dairy Substation in Miami, Florida experienced a total system failure. It started with the simple failure of a capacitor bank (a piece of equipment used to regulate p...

On August 17th 1993, the Ives Dairy Substation in Miami, Florida experienced a total system failure. It started with the simple failure of a capacitor bank (a piece of equipment used to regulate power spikes and momentary drops coming off the main power grid in to one smooth consistent electrical current before being distributed to customers).

Unlike a Transformer (which will increase or decrease the amount of voltage put in to it by a percentage) a Capacitor is like a bucket with a faucet. The bucket part of the capacitor can hold a certain amount of incoming power like a buffer, while the faucet part of the capacitor will only let a precise amount of power through. This way, as other cities pull more power from the grid and then drop their usage over and over, all this constant fluctuation of the grid is smoothed out by the capacitor banks before the electricity gets sent out to customers. Without it, peoples home electronics would be turning off or dimming one second, and the next second a bunch of people in another city would turn off their air conditioners (or what have you) and that sudden surplus of power on the grid would then fry your computer or TV or burn out your light bulbs, etc. By running the power through those capacitors, there's a place for excess power to go and a place to draw power from (the bucket), while the output (faucet) only lets the correct amount of power through.

So anyway, a huge power surge on the Miami grid fried one of the capacitor banks, and caused a breaker to trip open when that rush of unregulated power went through the breaker. Unfortunately, the breaker malfunctioned and created an arc fault (a continuous lightning bolt that acted like an uncontrollable welding torch from hell) between the hot side of the breaker and wherever it could find a ground to complete the circuit, thus pulling far more current then the facility was designed for.

Unknown to FPL operators at the time, the emergency response system that would have notified the grid dispatcher of a serious problem (who would have then cut the power to the substation and neighborhood to kill the arc fault) was inoperative, and no message was ever sent. Since the dispatcher had no way of knowing about the arc fault, the substation continued to self-destruct.

The uncontrolled arc fault caused the coolant (mineral oil) inside the primary transformer to overheat to critical levels until it was boiling in a highly flammable state. This boiling caused pressure to rise inside the transformer (like a pressure cooker) until the seals finally blew. Mineral oil vapor proceeded to pour out at that point (the plume of white fog at the end) which ignited on the arc fault. The flames caused by this immediately ignited back to the source, (the boiling transformer tank), which ignited the mother load of oil inside causing the substation to explode in a giant ball of fire.

The sudden loss of all transformer coolant resulted in a simultaneous flash-meltdown of the transformers innards, which immediately caused the main high voltage fuse to overload and blow (the loud explosion at the end), finally killing the arc.

As a side note, even though it sounds like a million things went wrong, there were really only two main things that went wrong. Arcing is actually very common when a breaker opens since the breaker has hundreds of thousands of volts running through it. And capacitor bank failures are also extremely common when they can fry in the event of an extreme power surge.

The UNCOMMON event that caused this was the fact that the arc-fault suppression system (the system that extinguishes the arc), and the Emergency Response System (that would have told the grid dispatcher that something was STILL wrong) were both placed on the same circuit breaker, and that breaker was faulty. Those two backup systems are really the only final thing a substation has in order to prevent this from happening in your neighborhood, and both of them were inoperative in this instance because of that bad circuit breaker, (and the fact that someone put both the backup system and the auxiliary backup system on the same circuit to begin with - a big no no).

You can view an aerial photo of the substation location here: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&h... (Note: this is a current map photo of the newly rebuilt, slimmed down substation that sits where the old substation used to be.)

Category: News & Politics

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power plant meltdown explosion electrical fire

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101xfmrogers (1 week ago) Show Hide

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that was a loud fuse!

dutycalls01 (1 week ago) Show Hide

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The explosion could have come later.The only reason it blew up so fast was that the firemen actually tried to use water to put out that fire.If u looked carefully u could actually see the water hitting o the fire then BOOOMMM! Using water to put out an electrical fire erm...how wise...

timsmith85 (1 week ago) Show Hide

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@dutycalls01 that wasn't water, that was mineral oil vapor. Read the description. You can see it erupting out of the transformer.

Helgerty (1 week ago) Show Hide

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That wasnt water, it was hot oil under pressure. Look again.....

BobbytheBongoPlaya (1 week ago) Show Hide

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lol

clevlandsteamer69 (1 week ago) Show Hide

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That was nuts

3of11 (2 weeks ago) Show Hide

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Funny how people scream at the fuse breaking, when in fact thats the only GOOD thing that happened there!

sarshalom2006 (2 weeks ago) Show Hide

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nuuuuuuuuuuu

N37BU6 (3 weeks ago) Show Hide

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This video is deeply satisfying...

JAROSLAVAGINA (3 weeks ago) Show Hide

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lol sounded like a big welder!

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Power Plant Substation Explodes

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