SF PG&E Power Outage

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ATSman

ATSman

ATSman
Location
San Francisco Bay Area
Occupation
Electrical Engineer/ Electrical Testing & Controls
Not sure if this is the place or Campfire Chats but here goes.
I am surprised that we have not heard of any reports from our members in the SF bay area regarding the massive
power outage last Friday 4-21 in San Francisco. It was reported that the outage that included parts of the city from the financial district to the Sunset (west coast) were affected to the tune of approx 90K customers. A circuit breaker burnt up in the POCO's Larkin & Eddy St substation. This old equipment was scheduled for replacement in the near future.
We were called out that morning on reports that a Telco office had lost power and some backup equipment failed. The emer gen started and at the house service panel the telco breaker pair transferred ok but the building power circuit failed. The utility breaker opened but the emergency breaker failed to close. After about 45 min. the gen shut down on high temp alarm since the cooling fans were feed from the building power circuit so the whole office was dead, Telco equip on batteries. The UPS that fed the emer lights eventually died and it was all flashlights from there.
We could not get the BP breaker (1600A W SPB-100) to close and had to replace it with a spare: top cell and no breaker lifting cradle!
Had to change the belts on the air compressor motors to the backup DC motor to get the air start tanks filled to start the gen to get emer power back to the bldg. At around 5PM POCO power came back and got the office back to normal. An exciting day to say the least! :)
 
ATSman said:
Not sure if this is the place or Campfire Chats but here goes.
I am surprised that we have not heard of any reports from our members in the SF bay area regarding the massive
power outage last Friday 4-21 in San Francisco. It was reported that the outage that included parts of the city from the financial district to the Sunset (west coast) were affected to the tune of approx 90K customers. A circuit breaker burnt up in the POCO's Larkin & Eddy St substation. This old equipment was scheduled for replacement in the near future.
We were called out that morning on reports that a Telco office had lost power and some backup equipment failed. The emer gen started and at the house service panel the telco breaker pair transferred ok but the building power circuit failed. The utility breaker opened but the emergency breaker failed to close. After about 45 min. the gen shut down on high temp alarm since the cooling fans were feed from the building power circuit so the whole office was dead, Telco equip on batteries. The UPS that fed the emer lights eventually died and it was all flashlights from there.
We could not get the BP breaker (1600A W SPB-100) to close and had to replace it with a spare: top cell and no breaker lifting cradle!
Had to change the belts on the air compressor motors to the backup DC motor to get the air start tanks filled to start the gen to get emer power back to the bldg. At around 5PM POCO power came back and got the office back to normal. An exciting day to say the least! :)
Click to expand...

The only thing that would make it more perfect would be the power coming back on JUST as you finished that process. :D
 
This sort of reminds me of something that happened to me. Winter of 2015, my first month as a troubleman, also at 22 I was the youngest guy as a first class line technician. Its 6pm and I'm calibrating some metering equipment at a substation, after a few hours I get ready to hot the metering circuit back up. I gave the 169kv breaker a close command, and every breaker in the sub opened. The main 345kv line seperated from the sub, as well as all the radial feeders and sub transmission, knocking out power to 123000 customers. At this point I'm like " well.... Sh!!".
I stick around for a few minutes searching for what I did wrong, its 10 degrees out and theres sweat pouring off of me, then I get called back to base, sweating it out for a few hours thinking I caused this, I was ready to kiss my job goodbye lol. It wasn't until 3 am the guys told me that our lines tripped open due to an over frequency event 40 miles away, and they knew I was working in the substation.

I'm still planning my revenge.


Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk
 
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truck41trouble said:
This sort of reminds me of something that happened to me. Winter of 2015, my first month as a troubleman, also at 22 I was the youngest guy as a first class line technician. Its 6pm and I'm calibrating some metering equipment at a substation, after a few hours I get ready to hot the metering circuit back up. I gave the 169kv breaker a close command, and every breaker in the sub opened. The main 345kv line seperated from the sub, as well as all the radial feeders and sub transmission, knocking out power to 123000 customers. At this point I'm like " well.... Sh!!".
I stick around for a few minutes searching for what I did wrong, its 10 degrees out and theres sweat pouring off of me, then I get called back to base, sweating it out for a few hours thinking I caused this, I was ready to kiss my job goodbye lol. It wasn't until 3 am the guys told me that our lines tripped open due to an over frequency event 40 miles away, and they knew I was working in the substation.

I'm still planning my revenge.


Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

"Revenge is a dish best served cold." Sicilian proverb
 
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I'm still surprised a single failed breaker cleared the whole station. Normally something of that size is subdivided into multiple bus sections so it does clear every feeder.
 
truck41trouble said:
This sort of reminds me of something that happened to me. Winter of 2015, my first month as a troubleman, also at 22 I was the youngest guy as a first class line technician. Its 6pm and I'm calibrating some metering equipment at a substation, after a few hours I get ready to hot the metering circuit back up. I gave the 169kv breaker a close command, and every breaker in the sub opened. The main 345kv line seperated from the sub, as well as all the radial feeders and sub transmission, knocking out power to 123000 customers. At this point I'm like " well.... Shit".
I stick around for a few minutes searching for what I did wrong, its 10 degrees out and theres sweat pouring off of me, then I get called back to base, sweating it out for a few hours thinking I caused this, I was ready to kiss my job goodbye lol. It wasn't until 3 am the guys told me that our lines tripped open due to an over frequency event 40 miles away, and they knew I was working in the substation.

I'm still planning my revenge.


Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

What are the chances of that timing. :lol::lol:
 
Sales Mule

Sales Mule

ATSman said:
Not sure if this is the place or Campfire Chats but here goes.
I am surprised that we have not heard of any reports from our members in the SF bay area regarding the massive
power outage last Friday 4-21 in San Francisco. It was reported that the outage that included parts of the city from the financial district to the Sunset (west coast) were affected to the tune of approx 90K customers. A circuit breaker burnt up in the POCO's Larkin & Eddy St substation. This old equipment was scheduled for replacement in the near future.
We were called out that morning on reports that a Telco office had lost power and some backup equipment failed. The emer gen started and at the house service panel the telco breaker pair transferred ok but the building power circuit failed. The utility breaker opened but the emergency breaker failed to close. After about 45 min. the gen shut down on high temp alarm since the cooling fans were feed from the building power circuit so the whole office was dead, Telco equip on batteries. The UPS that fed the emer lights eventually died and it was all flashlights from there.
We could not get the BP breaker (1600A W SPB-100) to close and had to replace it with a spare: top cell and no breaker lifting cradle!
Had to change the belts on the air compressor motors to the backup DC motor to get the air start tanks filled to start the gen to get emer power back to the bldg. At around 5PM POCO power came back and got the office back to normal. An exciting day to say the least! :)
Click to expand...

I heared you had a clueless sales mule with you who dropped the breaker because you flashed his face with the flashlight. Is that the true.
 
SFE Tester said:
I heared you had a clueless sales mule with you who dropped the breaker because you flashed his face with the flashlight. Is that the true.
Click to expand...

Clueless Mule,
Yes that may be your story but I'd like to think that if you and your partner would have waited for me to help you lower the breaker then maybe you would not have lost it.
See attached pic of sensible way of handling the 200# breaker;

The mule is wearing the safety vest
 

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I was installing a transformer in a plant one time and the power went out. since I couldn't see I figured I'd go to the lunch room and have a cup of coffee. Pretty soon I see these two guys run past, then I see the plant nurse and the safety officer, then two of my guys. Ohhhhh, I go over and they were all standing around the transformer huffing and puffing as I walked up and asked, "so what's going on?" They all just looked at me and kind of glared, "we figured that you had fried yourself and we were just going to find a smoking body". "Well there might be one somewhere, but this wasn't the cause of the power outage. want a cup of coffee?"
 
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