480 volt 3-phase Arc Flash Demonstration
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ส.ค. 2024
- Here arcs were intentionally initiated by bridging wires across three copper bus bars in a testing laboratory. Three phase 480 volt power was then applied across the bus bars for about 1 second. The wires immediately explode, forming a conductive plasma which forms high current power arcs between phases. The actual fault current in the demonstration is not known, but is likely in the range of tens of kiloamps.
As loud as a jet engine at takeoff, several times hotter than the surface of the sun, shrapnel and molten metal blasted to high heavens, superheated air and other chemicals, and forces strong enough to send people flying, not to mention 10,000+ amps of electric current. Even words cannot accurately describe the power of an arc flash. No joke
not to mention the force generated by the arc blast is strong enough to rupture internal organs just like a hand grenade .
I just survived this three weeks ago. Burnt up pretty bad but living and back to work and the gym.
@@EGO_GAMES glad you’re ok.
@@EGO_GAMESHow did it happen
I feel like you did a pretty good job describing it just then
I bridged a 3-phase conduit at this voltage with a box-wrench (lost my balance while on a ladder, was falling when I reached out to the conduit)...blew access plates off the conduit for about 20 feet in both directions.
I didn't get much more than 1st and 2nd degree burns on my hand and some copper-stained skin.
I was insanely lucky to not have gotten worse...they had me back on the job in 1/2 hour.
Christ on a bike, that's some luck indeed. Fuck that boss tho.
208 or 480? Cuz 480 is no joke at all.
I would have needed more time to clean my pants out.......
That ding means your goose is cooked.
+cskillet2003 Yes...hot and crunchy:)
🤣🤣
If it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander
Ding, fries are done.
i know a tester at work who went across two phases. he spent six months in a specialist burns unit at swansea. two years later he still receiving treatment on his hands.
never under estimate the power of electricity
Copper expands 40,000 times its volume when vaporized and is about 30,000 degrees F. I am installing arc flash warning stickers to all of the cabinets where I work to make everyone aware of the potential danger inside.
And a good chance the vaporized copper will condense in your lungs.
Michigan ?
I feel you man. I make panels like that almost every day. NQB'S, WEB, column panels and etc. I know what they are capable of.
I need to find a new career path
Same.
Fuckin a right
Yeah this is pretty terrifying haha
optimistically cynical . Just started as an underground splicer apprentice.....this shit is real hahahaha
@@GreenGenerationTV You still alive?
1975 --In learning to start a 480V Generator (Starter Button in panel Door), instructor corrected my position by telling me to position myself at the side of the door NEVER standing directly in front of it. A faulty start will blow the door off along with anyone in front of it. I thought he was joking. A door on that box could be deadly to the camera.
0:11 pizza rolls are ready
Love the little bell at the end. It's the doorbell at heaven's front door.
Brown orange yellow, love it ! Nothing like the thrill of working in a 480 cabinet,
I got hit by 277 working on a air compressor being careless and not checking voltage after turning off a disconnect to make sure it was off. I grounded out to my leg to the case it knocked me back but so far years later I'm good. Had it been phase to phase I wouldn't be so blessed.
The ding was the best part by far, "Ding, everyones livers are cooked."
Ding, fries done!
this was a demonstration , it was simulated at a sub station to show lineman the severity of arc flashes
thats the same in australia, we have three phases going into our houses for airconditioning. 3 phase, 415V. if u short a powerpoint to earth or neutral, then there will be a brief spark, and the RCD/MCB will trip. if you short phases before you household main circuit breaker, the pole tope fuse, or underground power fuse will trip, but there will be a big bang
I used to work for a electric meter testing lab, and the owner had one close call with 480 volts. He was doing on site testing and maintenance of 480 volt meters at an electric cooperative and he came around to one site where the meter was mounted high because of livestock in the area. Just high enough he had to reach up, but not high enough he needed the ladder. Each location had a breaker after the meter and a soft start delay on the motor. Unfortunately at this location, the soft start was bad and the coop had some trouble with that brand of breaker flipping back on after being turned off. The owner finished with the meter and went to put it back in the socket, and next thing, he was running for his life to get away from the now flaming socket, while nursing some first and second degree burns on his wrist. Because of the failed breaker, he had completed the connection using the meter, and the arc in the socket instantly flashed over, launching the now destroyed meter some distance from the pole. If the socket had been a foot lower or higher, well, the owner had the foresight to ensure he had sufficient life insurance to ensure his family was taken care of. Needless to say, the coop got underway with a project to replace all the soft starts and breakers of the same brand as the one at that site (and that location had to be completely redone as well).
70% of the machinery at my plant use 480 3 phase.
Well, Chuck Norris called, he wants his extremely fast microwave back..
Rofl.
At least it's a demo and we can rofl at the comedians.
Good one 😂
277/480 is like that. That's the main reason anyone with half-a-brain kills the feed. LO/TO (lockout/tagout) to avoid this. In cases where that isnt possible, use extreme caution and fully insulated tools along with the most important item: PPE.
*ding*
WAFFLES ARE DONE
Ding! Fries are done.
I used to work for the National Grid in the UK; they had a safety video that had a 3 phase supply medium voltage 600V supply connected across short circuits (where the HRC fuses should be and timed to cut after 1.5 cycles (30mS second at 50Hz)The entire steel cabinet exploded they were filming using high speed cameras at a distance of at least 100+ feet away! The reason for this violent demonstration? Don't use metal spanners in live MV cabinets!!
How man my yrs ago was that now???
That bell.
Soooo many puns and jokes. (Brain splode)
That ding at the end was satisfying haha
Ding! your wires are ready!
I love the short flash. a good way to destroy junk
@twn5858 I know. I've seen it at work where 480 flashed over between phases on an input breaker of a DC supply under test because of humidity and the fact that the phase lugs were too close together. The salesman (started as a tech) was lucky our lines were so soft and it still tripped the 1000 Amp breaker at our service entrance. He only had some small molten copper splashes on his glasses and stunned a little. Then there's 4160/2400, 13.2KV/7200 on up. Fuck that 480 is plenty enough for me.
@dispatcher7007 480/277VAC 60Hz is very common in the USA and in Canada. Whereas 400/230VAC 50Hz is very common in Europe and other parts of world.
200/115 vac 3ph 400z in aviation
*Ding!* _Lunch is Ready!_
DING! Fries are done!
I am glad this could't happen with normal household current.
I (in Germany) have 3 phases; 400 volts and 63 amps which go into the house. The normal sockets are only 1 phase; 230 volts and 16 amps.
I think, in this experiment they used a few thousand amps.
Yes. Remember, the current available is limited by the impedance of the distribution transformer that feeds your neighborhood. So while the mains to your house is rated for 63A continuous, the fault currents could be much higher - a few kiloamps is likely. In North America, 480 is an industrial voltage and the rated currents are likely to be much higher, with correspondingly higher fault currents.
@@MrSunrise- what are those max current numbers like in a typical USA home, with 115V and a 100-200A panel?
DING!!! Your custom specialty Ribs are ready.
Had to open a 800 amp 3 phase 277/480 main distribution panel to inspect for an estimate.... Absolutely terrifying....
The horror!
@@billmoran3812 nerve recking without a doubt
I like the "DING!"
277/480 is NOT friendly to anything that gets in its way. Trust me.
i've heard people say that electricity hates them, its because they form a reputation like this!!!
3 words: Available Fault Current!!!
even shorting one 63 amp fase will make such a blast and paint the interior of the cabinet with copper and carbon ... some people are careless and close metal junction boxes with loops still sticking out .... and shorts as a result
Ill mess with 120v even 3 phase 208v single phase 240v and even the odd 277v. But 480v is where I stop and become very respectful to my surroundings.
"a man's got to know his limitations." My hat's off to you - stay safe!
In other words, to simplify what Dain said (LOL!) the smoke comes from the metal, wires, and everything else being incinerated by the heat produced.
this is why i never look at the panel at the same time i flip breakers on to test them. just in case there is a fault somewhere i dont want any flash blindness. though the highest panels ive worked on were 270.
NCSU in the late 60s, friend I went to high school with hangs a pop-top chain out of his 11th floor dorm window (yeah, they drank a LOT of beer), kid on the ground (at night) picks up end and stretches it out to see how long it is, contacts a 13,200 volt primary line running parallel to the building, big boom! Pop-tops vaporized like fuse links, both guys lived, looked pretty much normal after the skin grafts to their arms and faces for the 2nd & 3rd degree burns...
WTF is a pop-top chain, when it's at home, or in a dorm?
What's with the bell
wow! likes my microwave oven! DING
I literally died at the ding
i love that ding sound at the end haha
In Australia, its 230V single phase and 400V 3 phase, but ive quite often tested close to 250V and 430V. Depends how close to the transformer I guess.
U.K. supposed to be 230, always used to be 240, but they obviously didn’t change all the old transformers to drop it to 230, old installations still run at 240-250v single. Still falls within the 230v required tolerance.
*Ping* "Sir your egg is properly boiled!"
480/3ph is extremely common.
In North America. The rest of the world is typically around 400/3ph.
They took a peice of metal and crossed it over all 3 phases at the same time. Yes the smoke is from the wires. Fault current weither it be to ground or another condutor can get up into the 10's of thousands of amps for a fraction of a second givin the load and power system. But yeah an Arc Flash is basically a ball of gas 4 times hotter then the surface of the sun a humans first reaction is to gasp letting that extreme heat and deadly fumes into your lungs. This is what kills you.
@daathboot
Now if only our PPE, as suggested by OSHA, could handle 35000F arcflashes. Such a painful thing if you ever get caught in one...Teacher had experiments with industrial 1000A busbar.
@imfree707 Yeah 240V or below is pretty benign I've never seen arc flash occur below 380V or so. 240V or less just makes lots of yellow sparks and smoke no plasma and runaway fault current as you describe.
Now 4160 or higher........
drilling into a live DB with a hole saw for a gland and accidently clipped one of the incoming phases, that was a 150A short from live to ground (tripped the breaker) very glad I didn't catch two phases
The bell at the end of the event was for the waitress that your burger is done cooking and is ready for pickup.
@jake3085 It's across buss bars so fairly high amperage.
@PeloquinforSenator yeah but dosen't a person (depending on many factors) have an average resistence of like 16k to 20k ohms
That’s why switchgear is built with metal cabinets.
You wouldn't be working with 480V anyway unless you're doing heavy industrial stuff. If you just do residential/commercial you'll mostly be working with 120/240V split phase and 120/208V three phase. That's a low enough voltage that you won't get this sort of arc flash.
Phewwwww D:
I've been playing around with 120V x3 phase all week, and i only just learned that tapping the phase and neutral to a metal sheet to see if it's live (hey, safety first) can actually cause an *explosion* >_>
Glad to know dummies like me can't blow ourselves up that easily.
csknives2140 we just use either a wiggy or a fluke....this dude is a crack head lol
480v primary 120/208v secondary arc flash survivor, just yesterday i threw a knife switch, secondary side dead short against transformer frame. Fused for 400 amps, available AIC rating higher than the AIC rating of a 3000 amp main, main tripped, fuses did not blow..and i walk unscathed..there is a god.
You lucky SOB!
so what exactly caused the explosion? did the 480 volts short the other wires inside the box? and was the smoke from the wires and the other things being incinerated? is their something i can read to get a better grasp on this subject?
Fault currents can be very high (tens of thousands of amps) - the explosion was the bridge wires flashing into copper vapour.
First time I saw this it brought back fond memories of my babysitter when she would say dinner time. I ate the food anyway becouse she was nice and I did not want her to feel like a failure. Besides I was so much of a friggen brat I figgured telling her this tasts like s*** would have destroyed her for life.
Unleash the kracken.
That must be really dangerous
Ding! Butter and toast!
00:12 Cooked to perfection and under two seconds
Haha, I was thinking the same things when I first watched this. I guess they couldn't wait for the popcorn to finish before starting the test...LOL.
And this is why I refused to work on a PDU because I am not a licensed electrician. Employer did not like my decision.
That bell sound means dinners ready !!!
Dishes are DONE !!
Ding! Dinners ready!😂
WRONG LEVER! Why do we even have that lever?
The higher resistance the higher the heat.. high restistance in the body causes the electricity to cook you from the inside out..
So it's a bad idea to short all three phases with thin wire, what about thick wire?
Dinner is readyy!!!!!!!!
exactly what happened to my block transformer when under service.
Hey, I know nada about electricity and I have a question about the fault that took place here... Is this a symmetrical line-to-line fault? I couldn't see any wires going into the ground so I figured this must've been a closed-circuit. I'm probably wrong about this because I'm getting that information exclusively from observation. I was also wondering if three-phase AC generators arc with more energy than single-phase generators do? Finally, I was wondering what the amperage of this system was? 480 Volts isn't a lot of electricity as far as I know, but I figured that a violent discharge like this would require more amperes than is normally encountered in domestic electrical systems. I'm very new to electrical engineering and physics in general, so some help would be greatly appreciated.
It doesn't matter what the amperage was. Current depends on the resistance of the circuit, not the equipment that is being used. If your resistance between the phases is near zero, your current will be near infinite
lol, the ''ding'' was like the ding in a microwave...
Toasty. Unless you prevent or mitigate the risk to personnel.
that scared the crap out of me
Boom and Ding
your welcome, and so did i. i'm in a electrician class and i'm used to workin with 480 3 phase, i seen 380 i was like what?? hahaha
good old terry
i'm loving people's "ding" comments
thank now i get an idea about it
DING! FRIES ARE DONE!!!
the 'ding' at the end is the same noise a microwave makes when its done. Imagine that being a microwave
Been there felt that.
go to your local wal-mart and look up.... 277
Reminds me of an A-10 warthog :O
Cool! I'll buy it.........
i've seen that happen in a motor control panel, but not as big as this. oO
behind the smoke, is the blast of 10,000+ degree molten copper.
No Nooo, ding means dinners done! It was a plywood microwave.
So what happened? Is it a mix of electricity and heat ?
That is the unhappy box.
It's a safe space.
lmao the little bell its like dinners ready!!
True power....NOW ENVY!!!!
Only if you prefer your chicken nuggets explosively assembled with a nice copper oxide crumb-coating.
This was published a yr after I was born…