old service drop

[Electron_Sam78]

What's up with th poco? During a preventive maintenance visit to one of our facilities I noticed that the conductors making up the service drop to the faciltiy were old and losing their insulation. This concerned me since the drop is a 4 wire vertical stack which then connects to the building horizontally (see picshttp://www.picfury.com/galleries/ImageGallery-51056.html ) so there is a chance that the conductors could make a connection with each other during a high wind and make pretty colors and molten copper. I had the building manager call the poco and when they came out they said it was no big deal and that if the lights started to flicker, give them a call back. What the crap? I've never worked for a civillian power company before so I'm not quite sure what they're thinking here. I know that when I was a lineman in the Air Force we would have never allowed this old crap to remain on our base especially in a situation like this. Any thoughts?

 

[jtester]

In my area, there are literally hundreds of service that look like this or worse. I wouldn't be too concerned unless you have critical loads. Utilities won't usually worry about deteriorated coverings unless there's some extenuating circumstance.

Jim T

 

[lazorko]

You may be able to get the POCO to replace the drop. I had a client with a similar lateral that ran through a pine tree in his front yard. In high wind, the lines would touch, and once set his tree on fire. He (an 80+ year old retiree) climbed his porch roof to keep the burning limbs from setting the house on fire.

Despite years of his complaining, the utility did nothing. When the service needed replacement, I called a field service rep at the utility first (I didn't want to get near the open lines! They were in awful shape!) and they were replaced in a day.

I imagine POCOs get a share of "nuisance" calls from homeowners, and tend to ignore them - when ECs call the right people, and can describe the technical details, we may fare better at getting a positive response.

 

[mdshunk]

Looks like a pretty tyical strand type drop to me.

That said, a call from an EC to the POCO engineer who covers that territory would get the drop replaced. You're wasting your breath talking to the dispatcher or the lineman.

 

[480sparky]

so there is a chance that the conductors could make a connection with each other during a high wind and make pretty colors and molten copper.

Don't forget about all the smoke in them wires, too!