When you take the POCO's word

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POCO's assurance that the power was on, without on-site inspection might also play a role in responsiblity, depending on when the damage actually occurred.
 
I wired a new house many years ago that went open neutral. The homeowner said the lights would go bright when the refrigerator kicked on, and other stuff that clearly pointed to an open neutral. Opened the panel to check my work, open neutral was on poco side. Poco came out, found out the lineman that connected the transformer did not tighten the lug at the pole. Clearly their fault. Customer said the poco didn’t want to pay for all of his damaged appliances. Never heard back whether he got anything out of them.
 
jaggedben said:
Interesting and worth noting that the AFCIs tripped in this situation. I would not have assumed that would happen. (Nor would I assume it would always happen.)

To me the biggest lesson and theoretical point here is that just because voltages look fine with no current flowing does not mean all will stay well when you turn on load. A 'good ground' can make the neutral look okay when it's not. Not sure of a quick or easy way to catch this (other than visual inspection might be obvious).
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I believe you are correct. The reason all the voltages looked good at the start (phase to phase - 240V, each phase to ground/neutral - 120V) is because the water main ground and rods were in place. Even if a POCO rep actually did come out to the home and checked across the meter he would have gotten the same readings until something turned on. The HO was away and just about everything was off except the fridge, forced hot air heat and the gas water heater. After checking, the fridge is working but I left a note to discard EVERYTHING in the it. The heat comes on, flame ignites but the blower doesn't come on. The water heater doesn't work. There's an electronic control on it that I'm sure got toasted. There was a smell of burnt eletronics in his office and I'm hoping that his battery back-up burnt up and not his 2 computers.
 
hbiss said:
Sounds to me that without the neutral, the AFCI breakers saw 240 on their electronics through the pigtail and destructed. :LOL:

-Hal
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I believe you are correct. Kind of like the self-destruct feature in Mission Impossible. :)
 
augie47 said:
POCOs here approach it as no negligence on their part. The tree falling was "an act of God" (or nature if you prefer).
Feel free to sue mother nature.
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I agree that you are not likely to get any money from the power company.

I was thinking of similar jobs that I have done and remember collecting twice from trees falling on the same power lines a couple of years apart from the homeowners insurance.
 
HO contacted me yesterday. He had an AC guy come in and they got the heat/AHU unit to work properly. Also, all the smoke alarms burnt out so, he'll have to replace them. He said everything else worked OK (even his computers) except the gas water heater. The electronics on that blew out with the disengaged neutral. I told him to go out and buy a lottery ticket - he's on a roll. :cool:
 
Gene B said:
A lot of modern power supplies for computers, TVs, etc. are the universal type (100V-240V) ...
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But not quite universal enough to be connected to a 277 circuit.

The ones I've seen aren't rated any higher than 265 actual volts, leading to the creation of yet another kludge, the 416Y240 service for massively multiplayer data farms.
 
drcampbell said:
But not quite universal enough to be connected to a 277 circuit.

The ones I've seen aren't rated any higher than 265 actual volts, leading to the creation of yet another kludge, the 416Y240 service for massively multiplayer data farms.
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Wasn't the issue a broken neutral on a 240/120V split phase service? 240V would be the maximum that anything would see.
 
drcampbell said:
But not quite universal enough to be connected to a 277 circuit.

The ones I've seen aren't rated any higher than 265 actual volts, leading to the creation of yet another kludge, the 416Y240 service for massively multiplayer data farms.
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Universal in this case means the same item will work on a typical 120 volt circuit in North America or on a typical 240 volt circuit in many other countries.

277 is mostly a North American standard voltage. And though there are other items that can utilize it, mostly is used for commercial and industrial lighting on systems already providing 480 volts for other general power usage.
 
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