Back Up Generators

[Dean]

Folks, I'm, on a private road with only 4 residences. About two hours ago I heard an explosion and the power went out.

I have a Kohler 20KW whole house back up generator, which came on within a few seconds and has been running ever since. I'm the only party on my short branch line with power.

I knew that the 80 A fuse on the 7,200 V line on my road had blown because I knew where it was and I could see that other houses nearby not serviced by my line had power. Once my genset had restored power and my battery backed up Comcast router had had come back up (don't ask) so that I once again had internet and phone, I called in the outage, speaking only to a computer. Turns out I was the first to call it in.

It also turns out that my new neighbor down the road about 1/4 mile has a close friend that works for Duke Energy and, coincidently, his friend was working today (I did not know this.). New neighbor called him directly (It's great to have connections.) and a Duke truck showed up about 30 minutes later.

Since I've been here since 1952, heard the explosion, and knew that the blown fuse was on the big 60' pole line on my property about 600' from my house, carrying a 34 KV 3 phase line as well as the 7,200 V line for local service, I stopped the Duke truck when it went by to offer my assistance. He was a nice guy, told me that he well knew my new neighbor who had called him and expected to find a downed tree on the line back the dead end road, which would need to be cleared before replacing the fuse. Great. Things should be back up within a few minutes.

It's now dark and I watched the lights of the truck as he inspected for the fault. I again stopped to speak to the Duke guy when he drove back out (I'm the first farm on the road.). Bad news. He could find no visible fault. Moreover, not only had the fuse blown but the fault had also burned out the lead wire to the fuse holder. Of course the fault must be found and cleared before replacing the fuse and lead in or it will just blow again.

More bad news. It's dark, raining cats and dogs, and not possible to get a bucket truck to the pole where the fuse is so it must be climbed to make repairs. Of course this requires more than one man, even in daylight, so help will be required.

Even more bad news. Due to severe thunderstorms in the entire region, there are multiple outages. My outage affects only 4 customers. Worse yet, according to the Duke Energy website, only 2 customers are affected. Bottom line, my outage is at the bottom of the priority list. Accordingly, the Duke serviceman, called directly by my new neighbor, was called away to attend to outages of higher priority. Duke website now updated to "assessing damage, restoration pending."

It's nice to have a back up generator. Without one, I would not be posting this. Who knows when power will be restored.

Folks, I will likely turn in within the hour. Before I do, I will shut down the genset. Why let it run indefinitely when I am sleeping and do not need it? If power is restored during the night, my old digital clock radio will chirp, waking me, and I can reset all of my old digital clocks and restore the genset to auto. If power is still out when I awake, I will restore the genset to auto to restore power. Things in the refrigerator and freezer will be fine until morning.

Dean

 

[dpendzic]

I went 11 days without power after hurricane Sandy, thank God I had my 4000 watt generac to give me essential power during that time!

 

[john in la]

We have some places around here that if a tree branch hits the line and trips the breaker it may take a week or two for the power company to even come out and look for the problem because the area is only accessible by boat or swamp buggy.

 

[john in la]

.

 

[Bruce(OR)]

I have done 10 days just due to a snow fall. That was fun. NOT! The power line down my road has two customers on it.

 

[grizz02]

could it have been a lighting strike?

 

[David G]

It is good to get some hours on it, I have slept through the night with mine running.

 

[Dean]

I don't think so. It was raining at the time but regional rain rather than thunderstorms and I heard no lightening strikes.

If I were to guess, I would expect faulty installation of my new neighbors service, which was done within the last 18 months.

Most likely the service folks will find the fault tomorrow in the daylight.

Unfortunately, the forecast is for 2+" of rain tomorrow.

Dean

 

[Bob]

I knew that the 80 A fuse on the 7,200 V line on my road had blown"

Wholly COW, you are talking about some SERIOUS power there!

That's 576 horsepower!!!

WHAT does the line feed, besides your place?

 

[JD Seller]

I am glad you have backup power. I used to rely on a PTO driven 30K generator. Mainly thinking about summer storms/trees/lightening. Then in the middle of Jan. had the electric go out on one of the coldest days on that entire winter. Had to happen in the middle of the night too. Woke up to no electric. Luckily had wood heat then. So we where warm. Then the fun part. No water as we have our own well. No a single tractor would start. Even two gas ones would not. It was 20 below the night before. So I took charcoal and filled a couple of steel hog feed pans. Put them under one tractor with a tarp over it. Hooked up the pickup battery with jumper cables. Took two hours to get it to go. Could only run the well and some other things. Waterers frozen solid after the heaters shut off. Took me all day to get the livestock watered and fed. We did not get electric back for ten days. The next spring I bought a 40K backup generator. It runs on propane and will run everything but the grain system. Still have the PTO generator and several portable gas ones. Kind of paranoid after that winter.

 

[Dean]

The main three phase line is a redundant line from the HT lines to two towns near me. It can supply both towns if primary power fails.

The 7,200 V line beneath the three phase line provides local service. Voltage is reduced by individual transformer at each customer.

The 80A fuse that blew is the fuse to the branch that serves the 4 customers (5 if you count my 2 meters as 2 customers) on my private road. I do not choose the fuse size. Duke does. Duke was here about 6 weeks ago to inspect equipment and told me that they plan to upgrade it to 100A but they have not yet done so.

Power is back up now. Recording states that it was caused by fallen tree(s), which is understandable considering all of the rain that we are having.

Dean

 

[Dean]

I installed my back up generator in 2014.

The next spring, a large Oak tree fell onto the main 34 KV 3 phase line about 1/4 mile from my place. The tree snapped off one of the 60' wooden poles and pulled the insulator off of the two poles on either side, taking out the entire area for 4+ hours. Of course, the local 7,200 V line below was also damaged. My power was off for 23 hours that time.

I do not often need the generator but it's nice to have when needed. I just serviced it last month.

Dean

 

[larry@stinescorner]

sounds like its going to be a while,,good thing your ready,its cool here,and were getting showers,lots of rain predicted

 

[MarkB_MI]

Here in Michigan, we're all on smart meters. Detroit Edison knows exactly when power goes out and which houses are affected. But since we're halfway between two cities, our place is often the last one to get power restored. We get an outage of several hours at least once a year, and multi-day outages aren't that uncommon. Almost everyone has some sort of generator backup.

 

[Phil in Pa]

We've been lucky. Haven't needed ours in a few years. Years ago I bought one of those 7200 generator heads from Harbor Freight and put a 12 horse Kohler on it which runs our whole house pretty comfortably. It's time to give it a run, haven't done that since early spring.

 

[NEKS]

In 06 a ice storm took out a big area of power. Our town has there own generators. There line comes within a 1/2 mile of me. Sit here 7 days without power till big brother got it restored. Look north all kinds of lights, look south dark.

 

[Hay hay hay]

Well I certainly don?t have a super sophisticated set up like yours ( wish I did ) but living out in the country and having a power outage is a challenge. I understand why the electric companies focus on volumes of customers to set their priorities. But that means I?ll always be a long ways down the list during major outages. I have a 5000 W generator and a cut off switch on my furnace so we can keep the house warm and run enough lights to hole up in one room with the TV & the computers until the power comes back on .

Electricity is just something we take for granted , until we don?t have it. We had a Big wind storm come through here last month That knocked out almost everybody in the county for three days. I was sure glad to have that little generator. Candles are only romantic for about an hour.

 

[Dean]

Interesting update:

Power came back up at about 3:00 AM. My power was out for about 10 hours.

This morning I walked the line from my house to the 60' pole with the 34 KV three phase line and the 7,200 V line beneath, about 500-600 feet from my house and found evidence that crews had climbed the pole to replace the fuse and opened lead wire.

The pole has two local taps, one supplying power to the 4 customers on my private road and another supplying power to 3 customers on the other side of the highway. Until this morning I had not noticed that these taps were from different phases.

Just now, I talked to my neighbor who happens to be city engineer for a nearby town and is well acquainted with Duke Energy local staff. Duke staff told him that there was no fault on our 4 customer line (OK, why did the fuse supplying only this line open?). Rather, the fault was to one phase of the 7,200 V line providing local service. OK, that explains why the 3 customers on the other side of the highway did not loose service, as I now know that their 3 customer tap is connected to a different phase, which must have not been affected. Moreover, the outage affected numerous customers between my area and the substation about 5 miles away where the 34 KV line connects to the HT towers. So far, this makes sense.

What does not make sense is why the fuse supplying my 4 customer 7,200 V line opened with no fault on the line when the phase supplying this line failed. I can not explain this.

Interesting.

Dean

 

[K Effective]

Dean, glad you are back up on normal power- the auto system is near the top of my list of post-tuition purchases.

One theory is lightening on the phase of your 7200 line not necessarily near to you. That conductor takes the overload and spreads it out to all the fuses. Normally , the fuse is there to protect the source from the load sides, in this case it may have protected the loads from the source side. Just a thought.

As you are aware, 7200V (phase to ground) is the common residential supply voltage, also called 12KV (phase to phase).

 

[Dean]

Thanks, K, and an interesting theory.

Could be, but there were no thunderstorms in the area. The rain was regional.

Being an engineer, a retired digital guy, not a power distribution type, I like to understand things.

Dean