PoCo blew it up.

[Minuteman]

On a church addition/remodel job that we are adding a 200 amp 3 ? panel, we installed a larger service. PoCo comes along to reheat it and BOOM. This Lineman seems to think that the colors should be Red, White, and Blue with Black as grounded - like on his rotation meter.

When the smoke cleared, we got a change order.

 

[480sparky]

Many POCOs use Red-White-Blue phase rotation for 3-phase.

Is the change ordrer for a new trans with more smoke in it? :grin:

 

[charlietuna]

It happens--everyone makes mistakes. had them come in and look at 4000 amp thru the wall bus stub and say "A"-"B"-"C"-"NUETRAL"(left to right) go back in their vault and not reverse it! in this case when they turned it on they tested the primary fusing!!! the gear held up without damage!

 

[benaround]

Another example of ' check it out yourself ' don't assume, take the extra 5

minutes, it only takes once!!!

 

[ptonsparky]

It happens--everyone makes mistakes. had them come in and look at 4000 amp thru the wall bus stub and say "A"-"B"-"C"-"NUETRAL"(left to right) go back in their vault and not reverse it! in this case when they turned it on they tested the primary fusing!!! the gear held up without damage!

Makes me think of when I told the help to put the service to "left of the window"...customer didn't see the humor in it.

 

[wawireguy]

This borders on negligence by the Poco.. Do they have monkey's working there or? Our local Poco won't heat something unless they check it first.

 

[hillbilly1]

Theres plenty of stories out there, had a new overhead service to several locations of apparel plants that consisted of three masts, the POCO ran each set thru the CT's ( all of the wires in one mast) but terminated them on transformer correctly, and couldn't figure out why the meter wouldn't work. The next plant I did in a different state nearby, the POCO did it again with a different crew. Did a school with the same POCO, but this time it was a pad mount with 4 service laterals, even though they were marked Yellow, Brown,Purple and Grey, they were going to terminate each pipe to a different lug (all of pipe "A' to phase "A" pipe "B" to "B" phase and so on)

 

[djohns6]

Hey , we could take turns . Ya'll can tell stories about stupid POCO guys and I can tell stories about dumb plant electricians . I been in this business a long time . Bet I could hang with ya ' . :grin:

 

[hillbilly1]

Especially when utility guys wire houses and cut the grounds off saying that you only need two wires to make it work! Utility work and electrical work are two different animals, both are specialized trades. Most Linemen are not trained for past the meter and most electricians are not trained for high voltage work. In the words of that great philosopher Rodney King " Can't we all just get along" Though I also don't blame meter installers when they turn their head and cringe when they put the meter in!

 

[iaov]

I don't know how much training our POCO guys get here but I have never seen them warm anything up without getting out a Fluke and having a peek at things first.

 

[Minuteman]

I don't know how much training our POCO guys get here but I have never seen them warm anything up without getting out a Fluke and having a peek at things first.

That's the thing about it. I'm sure that the guy is well trained and intelligent. He just had a moment of confusion. Our colors are Black, Red, Blue and the rotation meter is Red, White, Blue. Stuff happens.

 

[peter d]

I heard a story from an ex-poco guy who told about the inexperienced linemen who got sent out on his own for the first time to cut a new service drop in. The service was pipe and wire, so naturally when he went to cut riser conductors shorter he cut the phase tape with it. Rather than call the super to tell him what happened, he just went ahead and guessed, and tied it in.

He started a fire and melted the phone and tv drops down to the ground.

 

[DavidA]

Though I also don't blame meter installers when they turn their head and cringe when they put the meter in!

Yeah we had someone leave a spare bus bar or two inside the meter section of the mains. Guess the POCO guy was impressed but not pleased when his newly installed meter launched out of the socket and stuck in the sheet rock on the other side of the panel room.

 

[djohns6]

Well let's see . There was this one time at a paper mill , when one of the 138kv/ 4160 transformers tripped ( our transformer ) . Turns out that the mill had a cable fault right at their main breaker and NOTHING ON THEIR SIDE TRIPPED ! They had no clue why their switchgear failed . My foreman just happened to go poke around in their equiptment and found that the plant battery system was down to about 30 volts . This was a 125v system . He asked one of the electricians about it and the guy said " I always checked the batteries in the control house " . Sorry pal , that is OUR control house and OUR batteries . He was unaware that they had a seperate DC system .
His batteries were located in the same house as his switchgear .

Ignorance can be found anywhere .

 

[hillbilly1]

Dumb moves are not limited to the field either, I had one customer that had a severe voltage drop when all of the a/c units were on. It would get down to 100 volts per leg. The engineers figured the transformer size for the stores yearly average power draw, so with gas heat during the winter brought the average way down. The POCO ran 4/0 aluminum urd 150' to a 400 amp service with a 380 amp load. when I came out to upgrade the service to 1200 amp, they wanted to feed it with two 4/0 lines. Meet with the engineers and explained what undersizing of their transformer and wire was causing, and they doubled the size of the transformer and paralled three 350 kcmil's. Customer had no more problems.

 

[mxslick]

Got pics?

Got pics?

Hey Minuteman, got any pics of the carnage?

And if anyone else has pics of thier horror stories, share 'em.

 

[Minuteman]

Nope, the JW on the job had it repaired before I got there. All that was left for me was to bid replacing the Frank Adams 200 panel.

 

[steelersman]

Well let's see . There was this one time at a paper mill , when one of the 138kv/ 4160 transformers tripped ( our transformer ) . Turns out that the mill had a cable fault right at their main breaker and NOTHING ON THEIR SIDE TRIPPED ! They had no clue why their switchgear failed . My foreman just happened to go poke around in their equiptment and found that the plant battery system was down to about 30 volts . This was a 125v system . He asked one of the electricians about it and the guy said " I always checked the batteries in the control house " . Sorry pal , that is OUR control house and OUR batteries . He was unaware that they had a seperate DC system .
His batteries were located in the same house as his switchgear .

Ignorance can be found anywhere .

ok call me dumb but I'm so lost on this. I don't get it.

 

[djohns6]

ok call me dumb but I'm so lost on this. I don't get it.

OK , I'll explain . People on this site love to hammer the POCO 's every chance they get . Only electricians and electrical contractors know anything about electricity . My point was that in my 32 yrs of power company experience , most of which involved commercial and industrial customers , I have seen some equally ignorant " electricians " . My example of the paper mill transformer trip was my little shot back at ya' . Am I being defensive ?
Damn right . :smile:

 

[hillbilly1]

I think it is on both sides, utility people thinking that they are electricians because they can work on high voltage, and electricians that think they know the high voltage end. Both are specialized fields, and proper training is needed in both. We work together in the end. Without utility people, there would be no need for electricians, and without electricians, there would be no need for utility people.