Multiple Large Surges Residential

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Cletis

Senior Member
Location
OH
We have a customer who is blowing out Cultler Hammer Ultra Surge Protectors like crazy now. We just installed 2 only a couple days ago and just blew both out again. This has been happening for a year. We have installed a total of 6 Ultra's. The energy company will not take responsibility. It is blowing out around 7 houses always at a predictable time. Early morning around 6 normally. When this happens he sees flames come out of whatever outlet he is near and our ultra's are getting blown to smithereans. We do know they have some sort of problem but they won't admit anything yet. The neighborhood is most likely getting a lawyer at this point.

Any ideas on what is happening here ?
 

Fulthrotl

~Autocorrect is My Worst Enema.~
We have a customer who is blowing out Cultler Hammer Ultra Surge Protectors like crazy now. We just installed 2 only a couple days ago and just blew both out again. This has been happening for a year. We have installed a total of 6 Ultra's. The energy company will not take responsibility. It is blowing out around 7 houses always at a predictable time. Early morning around 6 normally. When this happens he sees flames come out of whatever outlet he is near and our ultra's are getting blown to smithereans. We do know they have some sort of problem but they won't admit anything yet. The neighborhood is most likely getting a lawyer at this point.

Any ideas on what is happening here ?

yeah, but the timing is a bit early for the blow dryer stress load, however.

in LA, if you are working in a substation at LADWP, about 8:15am,
everyone goes outside the control building, and waits for the regulators to
calm down. they use these old stepping regulators, and when the load goes
berserk when everyone turns on their blow dryers for 15 minutes, the regulators
start clicking like mad as they adjust... that is usually when the things burp hot
oil or fail, neither is good to be next to one when it happens. if it's a mechanically
regulated peddler, the regulator may be sticking. it happens.

put a voltage recorder on the circuit and see what is going on. the poco has
a voltage spike that is tied to their operations somehow. it's common that
they will deny it. they don't want the liability for damages to connected stuff.

truth is, they probably don't know what is happening any more than you do.
it could be an operator who is switching loads. hell, it could be a lot of things.
it doesn't take much for the dominoes to fall.... the worst power outage in LA
history was caused by someone cutting an "abandoned" control cable with four
#12 wires in it, all at once, instead of separating and cutting them individually.

shut down a ton of service, and desynced the 230KV main bus. they had to reboot LA.
took hours.

one sparky with a pair of dykes was all it took.
 
Last edited:

meternerd

Senior Member
Location
Athol, ID
Occupation
retired water & electric utility electrician, meter/relay tech
yeah, but the timing is a bit early for the blow dryer stress load, however.

in LA, if you are working in a substation at LADWP, about 8:15am,
everyone goes outside the control building, and waits for the regulators to
calm down. they use these old stepping regulators, and when the load goes
berserk when everyone turns on their blow dryers for 15 minutes, the regulators
start clicking like mad as they adjust... that is usually when the things burp hot
oil or fail, neither is good to be next to one when it happens. if it's a mechanically
regulated peddler, the regulator may be sticking. it happens.

put a voltage recorder on the circuit and see what is going on. the poco has
a voltage spike that is tied to their operations somehow. it's common that
they will deny it. they don't want the liability for damages to connected stuff.

truth is, they probably don't know what is happening any more than you do.
it could be an operator who is switching loads. hell, it could be a lot of things.
it doesn't take much for the dominoes to fall.... the worst power outage in LA
history was caused by someone cutting an "abandoned" control cable with four
#12 wires in it, all at once, instead of separating and cutting them individually.

shut down a ton of service, and desynced the 230KV main bus. they had to reboot LA.
took hours.

one sparky with a pair of dykes was all it took.

OK...my 2 cents. First, stepping regulators are not old technology. Been around a long time and still being produced. Very few failures that I've seen. But they are set up with a time delay to prevent "stepping up and down too often". Usually 30 sec if in a substation, less if on a circuit. So any quick surges will not be corrected. If only a few houses are having problems, it's not the circuit. More likely a transformer or neutral problem. A recorder is a good idea, but getting the POCO to install one (they cost thousands of dollars each) might be tough. If all of the problem houses are off of one transformer or the end of a single phase tap, I'd think the POCO would start there. Just my opinion, though. If it does turn out to be their problem, any damaged customer equipment should be on their dime. As far as tripping due to cutting wires, yes it can happen. Don't ask how I know!:dunce:
 

Cletis

Senior Member
Location
OH
Here is my immediate concern. Is it really worth putting some more CH Ultra's in or wait and locate some class 1 thermally protected SP's until we figure out the problem? Cutler seems to think it's some sort of overvoltage with possibly some bad grounding combination.
 

growler

Senior Member
Location
Atlanta,GA
The energy company will not take responsibility. It is blowing out around 7 houses always at a predictable time. We do know they have some sort of problem but they won't admit anything yet. The neighborhood is most likely getting a lawyer at this point.


The power company shouldn't admit anything at this point because nothing has been determined at this time. What they should be doing is checking out the problem.

With a problem like this I wouldn't be dealing with their service department I would ask to speak to the engineer responsible for this area and I would explain the problem to him/her and see what could be done to solve the problem.
 

gar

Senior Member
Location
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Occupation
EE
141121-1153 EST

At our shop we had a problem one time. This is a three phase open delta system with a center tapped single phase transformer. Center tap is grounded. The single phase transformer is 100 kVA or possibly somewhat larger. The wild leg transformer is about 50 kVA.

At the time I had no monitoring equipment. We would notice light flickering at times, and at fewer times CNC machines would drop out on phase loss. Overall the problem existed for at least a year. It was an annoyance, and fairly clearly a DTE problem. We thought the problem was at the substation or on the primary lines (about 1/2 mile long).

Finally got DTE to put a recorder on our secondary circuit. This was there for a couple months. Indicated no problem. But during this time we had CNC drop outs, and light flickering. Then I hacked together a simple voltage monitor with a single diode and capacitor on one side of the single phase supply at my bench (120 V). Clearly there were overvoltage conditions. This was a crude peak voltage monitor. Also one time when I was near a floor fan there was a noticeable increase in its speed for a number of seconds.

Some time later we had a bad day of voltage variations. Called DTE and near dusk they sent one service truck out. While he was waiting for a second truck with a lineman he noticed arcing at two different terminals on the pole transformers. Visually the problem was identified.

I would not trust power company voltage monitoring. It obviously depends upon what is the monitor's capability, and how it is setup. You need your own simple recorder. Short over-voltage transients can be lengthened by a diode and a 30 ufd polypropylene capacitor with a 10 megohm load. The lower the load resistance of the voltmeter the shorter the memory time. A diode capacitor peak hold in combination with a laptop with A/D converter can provide a long term recorder.

.
 

meternerd

Senior Member
Location
Athol, ID
Occupation
retired water & electric utility electrician, meter/relay tech
Here is my immediate concern. Is it really worth putting some more CH Ultra's in or wait and locate some class 1 thermally protected SP's until we figure out the problem? Cutler seems to think it's some sort of overvoltage with possibly some bad grounding combination.

The definition of insanity is performing the same action and expecting different results. Sorry....couldn't resist. No offense. But, no, I wouldn't just keep blowing supressors. That kind of overvoltage can only be caused by a few things. Most likely is a bad neutral, causing a voltage imbalance. Another possiblity is a faulted transformer, but usually they will fail with a BANG! and blow the fuse. Also, it could be underbuild distribution wires slapping against higher voltage wires. Usually caused by too much line sag and wind. But that wouldn't happen at a particular time. The only real solution is to see what's really happening and when. That requires a digital recorder. If the POCO won't put one on, rent or borrow one, put it on and see what's up. Measure both voltage and current at the main breaker to see if the problem is load related. Take your findings to the utility and insist on talking to a system engineer. Good luck. I used to meet with many of their meter techs and engineers, and they are pretty sharp guys. Problem is that the company is so huge, it's hard to get connected to the right people for help. Don't give up!

Try having the customer talk to any other people who live close by and see if you can figure out how big of an area is affected. Strength in numbers kind of thing. If nobody else can cite similar problems around the same time, it could be just that service drop. Overhead is easier to trace out which transformers feed who, but the POCO has records for underground.
 

Cletis

Senior Member
Location
OH
I just talked with engineer. He was totally unaware of problems in that area. I'm guessing everyone thought someone else was taking care of problem but no one did. He is sending someone out immediately from their power quality team to record and come up with a solution. I'll report back as we find things out.
 

ATSman

ATSman
Location
San Francisco Bay Area
Occupation
Electrical Engineer/ Electrical Testing & Controls
One possibility we have seen in the past is a faulty power factor correction capacitor bank (PFCCB) on the utility pole (12KV) in the neighborhood. One of the phases was intermittantly striking ground and on an ungrounded delta configuration that is a no-no. It is called the striking ground phenomenom that raises the instantaneous voltage on the other two phases. These voltage transients pass thru the pole transformer to the end user. It has been know to raise havoc by puncturing insulation, destroying equipment and burning down buildings. This happened at a large phone co. CO that wiped out 37 rectifier modules costing $250K in equipment damage alone.
If you are hooking up a voltage monitor make sure the resolution is fast enough (1 microsecond) to capture the culprit. We still use a Dranetz 658 Power Line Disturbance Analyzer.
 

gar

Senior Member
Location
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Occupation
EE
141122-0840 EST

What is an Ultra? The C-H website seems to use the name across several models.

The statement that fire comes out of whatever outlet the customer is near implies that fire would come out of all outlets. If you are talking about an outlet strip with an internal MOV that explodes, then fire coming out of an outlet strip might make sense. Otherwise how do you get fire from an outlet without a very high voltage, and that would cause almost every pluged-in electrical device in the home to fail.

.
 

Cletis

Senior Member
Location
OH
141122-0840 EST

What is an Ultra? The C-H website seems to use the name across several models.

The statement that fire comes out of whatever outlet the customer is near implies that fire would come out of all outlets. If you are talking about an outlet strip with an internal MOV that explodes, then fire coming out of an outlet strip might make sense. Otherwise how do you get fire from an outlet without a very high voltage, and that would cause almost every pluged-in electrical device in the home to fail.

.

Update:

Its one of these

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Eaton-Wh...9gYrR4OPzBB9iImES77dGBGOSb3D0JTH6waArFw8P8HAQ

We now blew out 6 of these. I mean they totally disintegrated. We recently found out that there was no ground rod never installed and there is a mystery #2 with white tape leaving box but never making it to main water shutoff (GEC). It is showing a good reading so i'm guessing someone clamped it on a copper pipe somewhere above finished ceilings. This house is only a few years old and is worth over 1mil dollars. We installed 2 new ground rods today so we will see what happens or does not happen for now while poco is doing their power study
 

gar

Senior Member
Location
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Occupation
EE
141125-2127 EST

Cletis:

I have scanned (quickly reread) all your posts. I believe there are around seven customers supplied by the same transformer, that all these have the CH suppressors, and at least many are experiencing failures.

What I don't understand is fire coming out of any outlet the customer is near. Is it really sparks instead of fire?

I do not understand why there are not other electrical items in the homes failing.

Do the main breaker or fuses trip-blow when the suppressor fails?

Every indication is a power company problem. If the local neutral, the neutral of the transformer secondary, was opening, then at most there would be 240 V at an outlet. There would be no fire or sparks.

.
 

Cletis

Senior Member
Location
OH
I'm not so sure he said flames. It was flames or sparks I can't remember now. Most likely sparks i'm guessing. Lots of items are failing. Mostly radio rah devices, xbox's, motherboards, etc.. No breakers were tripped other than a couple that powered the lighting circuit that was controlled with dimmers or radio ra's that got fried. Once we removed the radio ra's the breaker reset fine. The sparks were from the MOV's cascading and exploding i'm guessing??
 
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