Pity one of my coworkers. At our power plant, he opened the disconnects while I was the safety guy standing 20 feet away. Once you start cranking on the handle, you can't stop until the end of travel. Gary had just broken the arc, when he started yelling. He was still cranking, so I wasn't sure what the problem was. I ran to him, and he hollered, "FIRE ANTS". They were nesting under the grounded steel plate he was standing on. He was well into the action when they started biting him. We ran to the metering house, and got his pants off. Those little bastards are quick. Our first aid room had sting medications for him.
@@matt0198922 As soon as the disconnects break physical contact, they start arcing across the gap. You need to open up that gap as quickly as possible to minimize the damage that arc is causing. I once saw what happens when the disconnects aren't closed correctly. I was a little more than a hundred yards away, and I could see a bright purple fireball caused by the arcing. It was melting the ceramic insulator. And when it had melted it down enough, the arc jumped to the grounded framework. BOOM!!! I hate it happened, but I'm glad I got to see it.
I enjoyed the fact that the guy recording, laughed of joy. That kid in men; * It's like watching a friend pick up a huge rock and watching the big splash.
I used to see that a lot. I worked for GE for many years test and inspect, substation repair. We tested low, medium and high voltage switchgear, and also Doble testing for substation transformers. I'm sure the technology is probably way ahead of what we used back in the 70s 80s and 90s
Back then you just climbed up and opened them by hand with hopefully thick enough gloves that didn't have any cracks in them since they were 20 years old at best.
Not really . Looking in the video from left to right you will see a power transformer that is connected to a circuit breaker which is connected to the air switch disconnect being operated in the video . The Circuit Breaker in the middle is "Open " otherwise when you tried operating the disconnect it would melt down and a massive explosion would result .
As a few other posts have noted, I am pretty sure that this would never get stale...WATCHING would always be cool.... ...says the eight-year-old boy in the sixty-year-old body :-)
Why is it operated like starting a 100yo Ford Model T? You'd think by now they'd simply use a motor with a remote open/close switch and do that remotely at some grid management building with other switches/substations. No guy in PPE gear needed unless it's to repair the motor. And if something goes south wouldn't that PPE be useless? A 230kV short would be like dynamite going off just above his head and probably kill him anyway even if the 10-foot 50,000F fireball wasn't a problem.
@@jad2290 I don't think he's backing Osha, it is a bit unnecessary imo though. No reason to waste time for two employees when it could be rigged up automatically. Unless there's an actual reason for it being hand cranked still? Only thing I can think of is due to the possibility for a remote activated switch to be hacked/tampered with etc.
Let's say there's a big arc that get's drawn and refuses to extinguish itself. The employee get's a good jumpscare and runs away, hits his head against an unforgiving steel beam and splits his helmet. While his or her ears are ringing from the thumb to his head in not only noise but also force, he is able to carry on without any visible physical injuries, just shook up and a little disorientated for a while for taking a blow to his hardhat. Now imagine someone not wearing a hardhat hitting the same beam... On a different video an operator once explained the hand cranking like this: "We don't like to rely on things that use electricity. If we are without it and we would need to operate one of those systems, we have a problem."
Next to possible induction charges in the fence and it being grounded for that reason, the ground grid is also there in case of a serious fault in the substation, it's to (well hopefully) prevent all kinds of stray currents due to how current wants to return to earth but this can obviously cause problems when there's no equipment using that current in between. With the "well hopefully" I am referring to the fact that in september 2022 we had a massive electrical fault in The Netherlands that multiple safety systems in the substation where the problem was happening (probably a grounding fault resulting in a massive arc-over that caused downed wires in the substation leading to all kinds of stray currents) were unable to detect earlier than they eventually did. The arc fault raised the mains level on consumer sides in multiple cities due to all kinds of phase inbalances that happened from the regular 240V (with an upper tolerated limit of I think 253V before normal safety systems kick in) to an astonishing 328V (remember: this is single phase, 3-phase voltages combined were even higher than that). Stray currents blew smart meters apart in a couple of consumers homes and the city heating system in a city in the province where the substation was situated also suffered severe damage due to the pipework (mostly metal) having gotten conductive. Due to safety systems not kicking in, the line feeding the substation started overdrawing current up to (current reports) 4 times what it was designed for, and it caused a 150kV line to start to smoke and sag till at some places it was 50 cm's above the ground. In other parts the sagging lines contacted the overhead lines of a train track that was running underneath the high voltage lines and a 1500VDC overhead line network that the trains run on here got some extra juice at AC and a much higher voltage injected into it. Multiple train travelers shared pictures of the ground surrounding the tracks smoking severely due to the stray currents induced in cabling for the safety systems of trains running next to the track and being connected to the tracks. Some overhead line portals caught fire due to the overvoltage protections trying to kick but obviously failing due to the excessively high voltage and current. There's an aerial picture from someone in a small plane who took a picture from the smoking distribution line between the offending substation and another one not so far away from there...there was a whole white line of smoke visible from the air...it was really something. We have never had such a massive electrical accident, and the power company is really worried about how such a thing was able to happen.
The switchyard (much smaller, goes from 138kV to 50 or 10kV I think) has been upgraded many times, but the parts that you can see from the road that allow for a disconnect between the higher voltage switching yard a kilometer away are all handcranks. I saw an operator on a different video once saying this about that: "We don't like things that run on power, if we are without it and we want to operate it, we have a problem."
I have a question. What is the coil on the left leg? I see it on all the new high lines near here they just put in. Every so often there is one of the coils that goes to something in the middle.
Let's say after opening the switch a part falls off that's not carrying current. You'd be surprised what a helmet can then do to stop someone from suffering a serious concussion or worse, a skull fracture. And then there's the obvious: "When walking to the work spot being able to hit your head hard against steel beams" kind of injury.
They are separating a part of the high voltage grid, either for maintenance in the substation or for a different part (let's say a distribution powerline). It's a disconnect switch (think of it like the breaker in your home, if you want to work on a light or a socket, you flip the breaker that light point or socket is on in order to not get shocked) just a really big one. The reason it's making that high pitched sparking noise is due to induction charges working in on the line from either nearby powerlines running alongside it, or just energy picked up over long distances, or sometimes simply the fact that a transformer being a big coil will hate to see it's coils discharged (it causes a big peak discharge, in the same way small electronics like consumer-grade transistors need so called flyback diodes in case they switch a relay, which causes a big transient spike upon switching off the coil). Due to these being operated manually, they are not capable of being used to separate a grid under load, if it would be used in that regard, the sparks on probably all phases would be a lot bigger and be capable of maintaining itself for much longer. Since that is damaging to the contacts on this disconnect, it is only used when a line has been de-energized and it's probably only a transformer on it's primary side still drawing or feeding it. The bigger disconnectors that move quicker can serve two purposes: either switch under load or be better equipped to handle very long distribution lines (that can pick up a lot of induction from parallel running lines). Those can be equipped with gas canisters that blow a gas-cloud of an oxygen-depleting gas (co2 or something else) around the contacts to give an arc a harder time to exist should it form upon switching. One of the most copied video's on TH-cam of a massively big arc-over situation on one of those types of disconnectors had it's canister fail and managed to produce an arc on one of the phases that was able to exist for a very, very long time, probably causing extensive damage to the contacts. To minimise damage you can see the contacts being made out of polished balls (high voltages likes spiky stuff to jump to and from) on the ends, and in the video you can see a little spiky piece of metal sticking out behind the actual contact that the arc that is present for a while get's drawn to.
You always mention the voltage how come nobody talks about how much current is going through the connection I want a sense of the power level that is being transmitted
@@donables1200 maybe on your property. The switchman never identified himself, nor did he properly identify the apparatus to be operated. The control room operator subsequently properly IDs the equipment on his comeback. I can tell you this, on our property the switchman would have received a message of stand bye from control operator, then a “ call by phone” where he would have been advised to follow proper protocol on the air.
@@edge1289 It is very obvious that face to face briefing on what was going to happen had already been conducted. This looks like a smaller plant, so the Control Room knows exactly what the Outside Operator is doing. Now, if this was a switch ticket for a substation, then yeah, they were lax on comms. I have 20 years experience and supervise at a 780 MW plant that almost daily grid switches units on 230kV and 345 kV lines and my panties aren't tangled about this.
@@donables1200 43 years as a Journeyman, last two years as Union appointed Safety Rep with jurisdiction over all operating field personnel at one of the 10th largest electric utilities in the nation. This would not fly where I’m at.
![ประสบการณ์ จ้าง Developer ที่ผมจะไม่มีวันลืม [ภาค1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bzivN4KDg-k/mqdefault.jpg)
This video really has a lot of potential.
I see what ya done there!
But I have seen so many of these videos, I might move to another arc
@@tigerxra8515 are you positive? Or will you alternate?
Har Dee har har
I hate you
I used to work with 60 cycles every day (until I got injured and had to sell my bicycle rental business) When I think about it today it still hertz .
🙃🙃😂
Take my like and leave
@@Solicify Take your "Like" back and delete your post = problem solved
@@kls2020 jeez dude relax lol.
@@sam8404 can't help myself since my injury occurred I am constantly changing in magnitude and periodically changing in direction.
Pity one of my coworkers. At our power plant, he opened the disconnects while I was the safety guy standing 20 feet away.
Once you start cranking on the handle, you can't stop until the end of travel.
Gary had just broken the arc, when he started yelling. He was still cranking, so I wasn't sure what the problem was. I ran to him, and he hollered, "FIRE ANTS".
They were nesting under the grounded steel plate he was standing on. He was well into the action when they started biting him.
We ran to the metering house, and got his pants off. Those little bastards are quick.
Our first aid room had sting medications for him.
I hope he got hazard pay for that...
I've been a switchman for over 20 years, that's a new one on me. Been attacked by hornets and wasps but never ants.
One thing about working at the power plant, it could’ve been worse!
Could you go into detail about why you can't stop once you've started?
@@matt0198922 As soon as the disconnects break physical contact, they start arcing across the gap. You need to open up that gap as quickly as possible to minimize the damage that arc is causing.
I once saw what happens when the disconnects aren't closed correctly. I was a little more than a hundred yards away, and I could see a bright purple fireball caused by the arcing. It was melting the ceramic insulator. And when it had melted it down enough, the arc jumped to the grounded framework.
BOOM!!!
I hate it happened, but I'm glad I got to see it.
I don't think i would have the guts to stand a few feet under an open switch with a quarter-million volts on it!!!! Bless you!!!!!1
I mean I'm sure they make really good money and the benefits are good.
I enjoyed the fact that the guy recording, laughed of joy.
That kid in men;
* It's like watching a friend pick up a huge rock and watching the big splash.
Yeah you said it.. that kids in men, that kids in men...
Men invented this, Men love matter, not individuals.
You can't help but chuckle. It's such a satisfying sound.
I used to see that a lot. I worked for GE for many years test and inspect, substation repair. We tested low, medium and high voltage switchgear, and also Doble testing for substation transformers. I'm sure the technology is probably way ahead of what we used back in the 70s 80s and 90s
Back then you just climbed up and opened them by hand with hopefully thick enough gloves that didn't have any cracks in them since they were 20 years old at best.
Looks like the same ones I use in my designs, but I only do capacitor banks, probably the lesser important piece.
Three way communication is a must.
On JSA’s my company referred to this as “level two comms.” Basically any instructions or whatever were repeated back rather than just roger.
It doesn't look that dramatic, but that is deceptive. There is a lot of power flowing through those conductors.
Not really . Looking in the video from left to right you will see a power transformer that is connected to a circuit breaker which is connected to the air switch disconnect being operated in the video . The Circuit Breaker in the middle is "Open " otherwise when you tried operating the disconnect it would melt down and a massive explosion would result .
The sound is just amazing..
As a few other posts have noted, I am pretty sure that this would never get stale...WATCHING would always be cool....
...says the eight-year-old boy in the sixty-year-old body :-)
Love that "heh-heh-heh" chuckle.
Can't say I'm shocked at how many zingers there are in the comments here.
Son, when you are older you can play with bigger toys.
I wanted to work on these towers but my guts really couldn't stand the tension
Congratulations, user. The Algorithm has chosen you.
This video has great energy
Thought about complaining but wanna avoid all the static
Feel the power! No kiddin'!
We have 69kv I've had to switch. 230 is *really* something!
I was shocked it didn't throw sparks. After that I was feeling a bit disconnected
It was not supplying any power. This video is awful. There is no arc.
It was not supplying any power. This video is awful. There is no arc.
It was not supplying any power. This video is awful. There is no arc.
It was not supplying any power. This video is awful. There is no arc.
It was not supplying any power. This video is awful. There is no arc.
Hrmm.. I was expecting something a little more... shocking.
Why is it operated like starting a 100yo Ford Model T? You'd think by now they'd simply use a motor with a remote open/close switch and do that remotely at some grid management building with other switches/substations. No guy in PPE gear needed unless it's to repair the motor. And if something goes south wouldn't that PPE be useless? A 230kV short would be like dynamite going off just above his head and probably kill him anyway even if the 10-foot 50,000F fireball wasn't a problem.
I have deep disrespect for you .
@@jad2290 I don't think he's backing Osha, it is a bit unnecessary imo though. No reason to waste time for two employees when it could be rigged up automatically. Unless there's an actual reason for it being hand cranked still? Only thing I can think of is due to the possibility for a remote activated switch to be hacked/tampered with etc.
Let's say there's a big arc that get's drawn and refuses to extinguish itself. The employee get's a good jumpscare and runs away, hits his head against an unforgiving steel beam and splits his helmet. While his or her ears are ringing from the thumb to his head in not only noise but also force, he is able to carry on without any visible physical injuries, just shook up and a little disorientated for a while for taking a blow to his hardhat.
Now imagine someone not wearing a hardhat hitting the same beam...
On a different video an operator once explained the hand cranking like this: "We don't like to rely on things that use electricity. If we are without it and we would need to operate one of those systems, we have a problem."
Missed it because of the air- guitarist!
God damn air guitarists!
These men earn every penny the make
So where does the unreanimated Frankenstein go in this circuit?
I hand crank 345Kv, loud as hell but not really a huge arc.
With a metal fence around power station wouldn't it pull a charge or is it grounded being in the earth.
Yes, the metal fence will charge from inductance. It is grounded very well to ensure nobody gets shocked.
The fence is tied to a ground grid that is installed in the switch yard, tied in multiple places.
Next to possible induction charges in the fence and it being grounded for that reason, the ground grid is also there in case of a serious fault in the substation, it's to (well hopefully) prevent all kinds of stray currents due to how current wants to return to earth but this can obviously cause problems when there's no equipment using that current in between.
With the "well hopefully" I am referring to the fact that in september 2022 we had a massive electrical fault in The Netherlands that multiple safety systems in the substation where the problem was happening (probably a grounding fault resulting in a massive arc-over that caused downed wires in the substation leading to all kinds of stray currents) were unable to detect earlier than they eventually did.
The arc fault raised the mains level on consumer sides in multiple cities due to all kinds of phase inbalances that happened from the regular 240V (with an upper tolerated limit of I think 253V before normal safety systems kick in) to an astonishing 328V (remember: this is single phase, 3-phase voltages combined were even higher than that).
Stray currents blew smart meters apart in a couple of consumers homes and the city heating system in a city in the province where the substation was situated also suffered severe damage due to the pipework (mostly metal) having gotten conductive.
Due to safety systems not kicking in, the line feeding the substation started overdrawing current up to (current reports) 4 times what it was designed for, and it caused a 150kV line to start to smoke and sag till at some places it was 50 cm's above the ground.
In other parts the sagging lines contacted the overhead lines of a train track that was running underneath the high voltage lines and a 1500VDC overhead line network that the trains run on here got some extra juice at AC and a much higher voltage injected into it.
Multiple train travelers shared pictures of the ground surrounding the tracks smoking severely due to the stray currents induced in cabling for the safety systems of trains running next to the track and being connected to the tracks.
Some overhead line portals caught fire due to the overvoltage protections trying to kick but obviously failing due to the excessively high voltage and current.
There's an aerial picture from someone in a small plane who took a picture from the smoking distribution line between the offending substation and another one not so far away from there...there was a whole white line of smoke visible from the air...it was really something.
We have never had such a massive electrical accident, and the power company is really worried about how such a thing was able to happen.
That evil laugh..
Were they even powered, and were they supplying any load???? Looks like 230V to me.
230KV? Hmm. Looks exactly like 138KV equipment.
Excellent. 💙 T.E.N.
Keren sekali mantap gan mantap 👍😎
inang potang ting tang walla wala bing bang
Never forget the smell.
I don’t see what all the buzz is about
Not something you do with a pacemaker.
What's the big deal ? I used to operate 400kv air blast breakers 40 years ago when working for the CEGB !
locally or remotely?
CEGB? something-something-Great Britain I assume?
Surely this is antiquated by now especially having an employee stand in there!
not necessarily. It's still done in many places to my knowledge.
The switchyard (much smaller, goes from 138kV to 50 or 10kV I think) has been upgraded many times, but the parts that you can see from the road that allow for a disconnect between the higher voltage switching yard a kilometer away are all handcranks.
I saw an operator on a different video once saying this about that: "We don't like things that run on power, if we are without it and we want to operate it, we have a problem."
I have a question. What is the coil on the left leg? I see it on all the new high lines near here they just put in. Every so often there is one of the coils that goes to something in the middle.
Not really sure, but it looks similar to our optical fiber ground wire (OPGW Wire)
An insulator.
Air switch goes buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
yeah we're opening that one, like you said.
Shocking... (R.I.P. Sean Connery)
That's all 😔I expected an arc like a house tall
Yes
if that happened then that would indicate something was wrong. It's supposed to look and sound like this.
What does the guy's outfit and helmet protect against? If he takes amps, he dies anyway, doesn't he?
Arc flash. th-cam.com/video/KqIagS8Knkk/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=KARLKOLMETZCPE
Let's say after opening the switch a part falls off that's not carrying current. You'd be surprised what a helmet can then do to stop someone from suffering a serious concussion or worse, a skull fracture.
And then there's the obvious: "When walking to the work spot being able to hit your head hard against steel beams" kind of injury.
Very dangerous job
Just imagine this opened under full load. 😲😲😲😲
that would blind everyone and probably fry the guy! lol
Here before this blows up
Can someone explain what’s happening?
They are separating a part of the high voltage grid, either for maintenance in the substation or for a different part (let's say a distribution powerline). It's a disconnect switch (think of it like the breaker in your home, if you want to work on a light or a socket, you flip the breaker that light point or socket is on in order to not get shocked) just a really big one.
The reason it's making that high pitched sparking noise is due to induction charges working in on the line from either nearby powerlines running alongside it, or just energy picked up over long distances, or sometimes simply the fact that a transformer being a big coil will hate to see it's coils discharged (it causes a big peak discharge, in the same way small electronics like consumer-grade transistors need so called flyback diodes in case they switch a relay, which causes a big transient spike upon switching off the coil).
Due to these being operated manually, they are not capable of being used to separate a grid under load, if it would be used in that regard, the sparks on probably all phases would be a lot bigger and be capable of maintaining itself for much longer.
Since that is damaging to the contacts on this disconnect, it is only used when a line has been de-energized and it's probably only a transformer on it's primary side still drawing or feeding it.
The bigger disconnectors that move quicker can serve two purposes: either switch under load or be better equipped to handle very long distribution lines (that can pick up a lot of induction from parallel running lines). Those can be equipped with gas canisters that blow a gas-cloud of an oxygen-depleting gas (co2 or something else) around the contacts to give an arc a harder time to exist should it form upon switching.
One of the most copied video's on TH-cam of a massively big arc-over situation on one of those types of disconnectors had it's canister fail and managed to produce an arc on one of the phases that was able to exist for a very, very long time, probably causing extensive damage to the contacts.
To minimise damage you can see the contacts being made out of polished balls (high voltages likes spiky stuff to jump to and from) on the ends, and in the video you can see a little spiky piece of metal sticking out behind the actual contact that the arc that is present for a while get's drawn to.
🙄wow...exciting🙄
You always mention the voltage how come nobody talks about how much current is going through the connection I want a sense of the power level that is being transmitted
Ozone smell...
ဓာတ်အားဖြန့်ခွဲပုံ အဆင့်ဆင့်
Tesla would do that with bare hands.
Amazing that it has 216,000 views (and 1,300 "Thumbs Up")
I was expecting something more dramatic
Seems a little premitive. I thought they were all automated.
nope.
Anybody got any chips?
43 years in the business and I’ve never heard such nonchalant communications between the systems operator and field personnel. What property is this?
Perceived Power Stations near Pussy Ache, Pennsylvania...
They used 3 way communications. No rules about how formal it has to be, only that the info is stated, repeated back, and confirmed.
@@donables1200 maybe on your property. The switchman never identified himself, nor did he properly identify the apparatus to be operated. The control room operator subsequently properly IDs the equipment on his comeback. I can tell you this, on our property the switchman would have received a message of stand bye from control operator, then a “ call by phone” where he would have been advised to follow proper protocol on the air.
@@edge1289 It is very obvious that face to face briefing on what was going to happen had already been conducted. This looks like a smaller plant, so the Control Room knows exactly what the Outside Operator is doing. Now, if this was a switch ticket for a substation, then yeah, they were lax on comms. I have 20 years experience and supervise at a 780 MW plant that almost daily grid switches units on 230kV and 345 kV lines and my panties aren't tangled about this.
@@donables1200 43 years as a Journeyman, last two years as Union appointed Safety Rep with jurisdiction over all operating field personnel at one of the 10th largest electric utilities in the nation. This would not fly where I’m at.
Why does it sound like that?
Those are baby switches!
I heard him say he was not to open no. 11!
No spark, no like :'(
okay
Mitsubish elevator Malaysian
hehehehehe
I’m shocked this video has so many views
I’m confused.
That was uneventful...
Wow...... 😴
not much of a load.
because as far as I'm aware, based on the little i know about it, that is induction current.
No extra interlock to hold arms vertical, so if gear broke, arms would fall, making contact with live feed.
You go right ahead and climb up there and install them
And you know this is true because?
You wander around all the air disconnect videos and post this shit. Like, fuck off already. Before something breaks and falls on you.
Good for you. You found some words that have more than one syllable and put them together. Go treat yourself to a popsicle.
That is why a lot of the newer switches operate sideways. 💙 T.E.N.
And, and...
That was disappointing
meh...
What a load of crap.
Underwhelming.