Surge from lighting storm

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massfd

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On Friday my wife called me shortly after a storm had passed and said only half the house had power. I thought lost phase but then my generator should be runing. She said the generator started and ran for 2 min and shut down but while it was runing still only 1/2 house had power

I got home about 1/2 hr after she called and went to the service panel where I found 3 20 amp breakers tripped in the LIPA panel and 2 tripped in the emergency panel. I reset them and all seemed well. I then found a few things in the house that did not come back on, they where powered by GFCI Recpts and the GFCI's had tripped. I then went around the entire house and found all GFCI's has tripped even if nothing was pluged in to them.

When I reset several GFCI's that used to have green LED's to indicate they were OK no longer have a lit LED.

On saturday I was talking to a neighbor and he told me he also had breaker trips, a computer surge strip that smoked, some blown GFCI's and a burnt CO detector. I found in my house my Laser printer is dead as well as the charger for my rechargable light that I keep by the service panels.

Today (sunday) I opened the laser printer up and found the 3 1/2 amp fuse on the incoming AC line had blown in a violent manner, it was a glass fuse and it was all black inside. Replaced the fuse and the printer works.

I should also add that every Traffic Signal in a 3 to 5 mile radius was on flash after the storm until reset by the service company and after reset several had red lamps that did not go out even when the green was on at the same time (green and yellow cycled normaly)

I am involved with several radio sites and they have taken direct strikes yet I have never seen a breaker trip due to a strike.

My neighbor called LIPA in Saturday and they played dumb, guess they do not open them selves up to any libilaty for this. Other than about a 30 second outage they never went down and I did not see any trucks in the area.

Any Idea what happened, I feel lucky I only lost a printer fuse and a flashlight charger (so far) and certanly not going the MOV surge supressor route as I have seen to many of them burn.
 
I have had a little experience with what this sounds like, as I posted in another thread, for the second time in about 5 years we had a long term over voltage surge hit a section of our town, which after talking to a linemen friends of mine they confirmed that they had a 69kv line come down on a 7200 volt line. I had asked them why it didn't clear but they just said they didn't know. the problem with this is most TVSS (MOV type) are not design for this and will get real hot and can cause a fire, as it did in both cases. most of these plug strips are made out of a ABS plastic and will catch fire them self. add a pile of paper near by and well you know the rest of the story. I have contacted UL about this problem, but so far they want some specimens, and I have not been able to obtain one of the burned plug strips for them.

But when this did happened we received about 80 service calls that day, which did give me some incite to what happens.
at My house (The first time) had about 6 TVSS strips + 2 Triplet surge/power conditioners plugged in. all that happened was my 200 amp main breaker tripped and all was fine.
This was the same where any house had at least 2 or more surge strips on both phases of the service. but where a house had only one either on only one phase or both, the surge strip would fail and in some cases get real hot and melt. a couple houses had them even damage floor covering like carpet, but did not catch fire as most carpeting has flame retardant in it. the neet thing was we had a new house that the home owner had come in and pluged in sevral of these strips where he was going to install his electronics and even though there was no load on them they still took out the main breaker, preventing any damage to the smokes or GFCI's like a few other new houses we had.
There was two houses that wasn't so lucky, where they were by papers next to a computer on one and the other was sitting on a stack of extra printer paper. I tried to get the fire marshal to log this exact cause but they would only list it as an electrical fire of unknown origin.:mad:

So hopefully I can persuade UL to get manufactures to add a one time fuse ahead of the MOV's in these strips, as the little breaker in most of these is after the MOV's. This will even force the replacement of these strips when they are damaged by long term surges.
 
hurk27 said:
I have had a little experience with what this sounds like, as I posted in another thread, for the second time in about 5 years we had a long term over voltage surge hit a section of our town, which after talking to a linemen friends of mine they confirmed that they had a 69kv line come down on a 7200 volt line. I had asked them why it didn't clear but they just said they didn't know. the problem with this is most TVSS (MOV type) are not design for this and will get real hot and can cause a fire, as it did in both cases. most of these plug strips are made out of a ABS plastic and will catch fire them self. add a pile of paper near by and well you know the rest of the story. I have contacted UL about this problem, but so far they want some specimens, and I have not been able to obtain one of the burned plug strips for them.

But when this did happened we received about 80 service calls that day, which did give me some incite to what happens.
at My house (The first time) had about 6 TVSS strips + 2 Triplet surge/power conditioners plugged in. all that happened was my 200 amp main breaker tripped and all was fine.
This was the same where any house had at least 2 or more surge strips on both phases of the service. but where a house had only one either on only one phase or both, the surge strip would fail and in some cases get real hot and melt. a couple houses had them even damage floor covering like carpet, but did not catch fire as most carpeting has flame retardant in it. the neet thing was we had a new house that the home owner had come in and pluged in sevral of these strips where he was going to install his electronics and even though there was no load on them they still took out the main breaker, preventing any damage to the smokes or GFCI's like a few other new houses we had.
There was two houses that wasn't so lucky, where they were by papers next to a computer on one and the other was sitting on a stack of extra printer paper. I tried to get the fire marshal to log this exact cause but they would only list it as an electrical fire of unknown origin.:mad:

So hopefully I can persuade UL to get manufactures to add a one time fuse ahead of the MOV's in these strips, as the little breaker in most of these is after the MOV's. This will even force the replacement of these strips when they are damaged by long term surges.
Click to expand...

This all rings familiar...check out THIS THREAD for a similar discussion on products and NRTL's....see the posts beginning on page 3 for the meat of the discussion...
 
Sounds to me you had either a lightning strike or power company mistake that momentarily caused a high voltage surge on one of your three service entrance cables. Of course the power company would not admit such a problem so that leaves lightning as the culpert ! And since lightning is "UNPREDICTABLE",each surge is different in magnitude and duration which determines how much damage can occur before system voltages return to their normal levels. So the closer you are to the strike(or mistake) the more damage you can expect.
 
I had a lightning storm one summer in my area, the lightning struck a tree in the backyard about 50' from the house. All of my kids battery operated toys started to play, and I lost a TV. Lighting goes everywhere when it strikes, you can put in place protective devices, that will help, but they are not 100%

I tell homeowners that I can install a whole house surge protector for power, cable, & phone, and also tell them to buy a 750VA UPS system at Staples, or the computer stores for the entertainment equipment. They usually have a $50K warrenty allownce on your equipment. They can use that before they go for the house insurance deductable.

- JWC
 
Lightning US Standards

Lightning US Standards

I am interested to know what standards my American Cousins are applying for Lightning Protection Standards (LPS) for sports stadiums. I have done a little online research and found NFPA and NEC.
In particular, would your standards allow a bare copper tape from the bottom of a tall steel stanchion floodlight to run several mts above ground before diving down underground (UG) to the main LPS ringmain?
The obvious down side to this (in my view)is.
1.using the steel floodlight stancion as a LPS conductor automaticaly fries the floodlighting system, which,as I am sure you know can be megabucks.
2.any bare copper tape above the ground is a "touch potential" problem from any UG Power cables and Lightning strike. Whilst it might be unlikey that a person is standing on top of the LPS tape at the exact time of the lightning strike, it would make sense for any LPS tape to either insulated and or buried directly at the base. Surely, the further you run the bare copper tape, the greater the risk factor.
3.the stanchion requires isolation.

Looking forward to your response.
 
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