This week's question is somewhat related to last weeks' regarding generators.

Has your / client's facility ever experienced a total loss of power from the electric utility?
Yes
No

This may be a good one for stories!

Not really an accident type situation. It was even more ridiculous.

Generally speaking the only really silly things I run into with utilities tends to be when you get the "utility attitude". You know the one where they rub the fact that they're a monopoly in your face and tell you that they can treat you like total crap as a customer because you have no realistic alternative. Mostly when you call the operations and mainteannce folks they're all just doing a job and truly want to do a good one. It's the bureacratic crap between them and you that causes all the grief.

A central NJ utility was on us for YEARS to replace our aging substation. It took a while until I had the utility, a couple PE's, and the insurance company all wanting to condemn it and nice pretty pictures of transformers over 50 years old that become an environmental problem to even move them due to the poor condition of the tanks before we finally got the go ahead to replace it. So we finally did. And then the fun began. The utility made every excuse in the book about why they could not manage to energize our substation. If 3 drops of rain hit the ground, they cancelled. If the sun was shining, they cancelled. If we had a full moon, they cancelled and delayed. And delayed. And delayed. I was down to the point where we were going to lose some umpteen thousands of dollars per day if we didn't re-energize. We made a call to the president of the utility. We got a response within 30 minutes. We got a call explaining how their union rules work and how they were going to work around them to get us re-energized. About an hour later the major account representative called crying that we went "over his head" and they were discussing whether he was going to continue working there. I asked if we kept on going the way we were going if he was ever going to be able to get us re-energized again. Answer: No, there was no way that he was going to be able to get us re-energized any time soon, and those were his words, not mine.

I did agree that next time I would at least let him know that we were calling the president so he had time to clean out his personal effects.

A tree brach knocked out our power, about a block away in a residential neighborhood. Our building is served by 240V 3 phase. The power was only off on one leg, so we were able to operate our offices and phone system. We were unable to run our 3 phase machines in a 40,000 sq ft facility. It took them 2 days to get the power restored. We had some blown fuses, but no other damage.

Just curious, were any of you affected by the August 14, 2003 black out that hit much of the Great Lakes, East and Ontario?

Lost power at our facility Friday. Report from our supplier was a bird made contact between the insulators on the 230kV incoming causing an "A" phase to ground fault.

WE lost power at least once a year from the mid 50's to late 90's. We replaced the aging 69kV substation with a state-of-the art 115kV Ring Bus. However, we lost power twice during the replacement of the station. The first time was a stupid mistake on the part of the utility. they cut a bus differential cable by mistake. The second time was am unfortunate series of events. The utility was cutting over their station to accommodate our changes. Just as they were wrapping things up a wind blown static broken and fell in a 115kV line serving the area.

We have had one other outage in latte 2004 which resulted from an improper setting on one of the relay. No more problems sice then and w=there have been several line fault that could have caused problems.

"a wind blown static broken and fell in a 115kV line serving the area." Could you please explain? Not familiar with this.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this.

The older 115 kV Lines in our area are largely built on wood frames H-frame structures with two neutral wires on the poles about 10 ft above the main conductors which are under-slung from cross timbers. These are generally either 3/16" or 1/4" steel cable. During the period of work previously described the wind was blowing a little above normal, which means it was 25 mph to 30 mph. The line in question runs from SE to NW. The prevailing wind in from the SW. This is an older line and at a direction change the "static (neutrals) were dead-ended in compression deadends. One of these broke and allowed the wire to fall into the 115 kV hot conductors, causing a fault, which could not be cleared in a normal fashion due to certain relays being disabled for the work that was being done.

I hope this answers your question. If not, then please post a clarification and I will try again.