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.