switchgear pictures

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drbond24

drbond24

Senior Member
Location
Barboursville, West Virginia
Anyone have any pictures of what is left after a dead short inside industrial switchgear, or know where I can go to find some? I've done google searches and not found anything so far.

We've got a 250 MCM conductor inside our switchgear that is laying on the 4000 A main bus, and I want a visual aid to help describe what happens when the conductor's insulation fails. We just found it yesterday and I insisted it be fixed as soon as possible, but I was getting dirty looks because it means shutting the plant down. I figured a good picture of the aftermath would serve better than me saying "boom."

Thanks.
 
celtic

celtic

Senior Member
Location
NJ
The Case of the Waterproof Motor Control Center


During 'routine' clean-up of a paper machine area, an operator wet down a load center, shutting down the machine and causing over $100,000 downtime.
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compartment1.jpg


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What causes failures in switchgear, transformers and cables ? and how can they be prevented?

Failures of medium and high voltage electrical assets often make headline news, such as the recent underground cable failure which resulted in 20,000 Liverpool homes being without power, or the transformer failure that left 250,000 Madrid residents in darkness. Similar outages have hit New York, London and Birmingham in recent months. So why do incidents like these happen?
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Switchgear_Explosion.jpg


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Found using a google image search for "switchgear damage" ~ http://images.google.com/images?q=switchgear+damage&ndsp=20&um=1&hl=en&start=40&sa=N

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I don't know if these will help you?
 
zog

zog

Senior Member
Location
Charlotte, NC
Sorry, I just changed jobs and moved and i dont have those pictures anymore, too bad I a good one from some GE 480V AKD-8 gear that was caused by the same senerio you are describing. Sorry, maybe I will get lucky and get an emergency call soon and post some new pics.

P.S. I posted some of them in another post a few months ago, not sure where but it was about arc flash, maybe someone remmembers those.
 
weressl

weressl

Esteemed Member
Location
Texas by the Gulf, geat crab, great shrimp
drbond24 said:
Anyone have any pictures of what is left after a dead short inside industrial switchgear, or know where I can go to find some? I've done google searches and not found anything so far.

We've got a 250 MCM conductor inside our switchgear that is laying on the 4000 A main bus, and I want a visual aid to help describe what happens when the conductor's insulation fails. We just found it yesterday and I insisted it be fixed as soon as possible, but I was getting dirty looks because it means shutting the plant down. I figured a good picture of the aftermath would serve better than me saying "boom."

Thanks.
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Start looking for another job if you are vested with the responsibility for the electrical system reliability but do not get the authority you need to do so.

If you demonstrated that you are consiencious about having the plant operate and produce reliably, but not at the cost of safety, then you should not need to put any extra effort to have them yield you the authority in such decisions. If the place is willing to operate unsafely, then it could be your life next, so I would duck and run....
 
drbond24

drbond24

Senior Member
Location
Barboursville, West Virginia
Thanks everyone for your input. This was very helpful to me.

zog said:
P.S. I posted some of them in another post a few months ago, not sure where but it was about arc flash, maybe someone remmembers those.
Click to expand...

I searched through your old posts and was able to find some pictures. Thanks.

weressl said:
Start looking for another job if you are vested with the responsibility for the electrical system reliability but do not get the authority you need to do so.

If you demonstrated that you are consiencious about having the plant operate and produce reliably, but not at the cost of safety, then you should not need to put any extra effort to have them yield you the authority in such decisions. If the place is willing to operate unsafely, then it could be your life next, so I would duck and run....
Click to expand...

You make a very good point. It isn't entirely as bad as that, but safety is not #1 around here regardless of what the posters on the wall say.
 
brian john

brian john

Senior Member
Location
Leesburg, VA
Unfortunately I have too many pictures, some involving injury to electricians.
I have posted some here before these are some of the same and maybe a few new ones.
These are not resized for web posting as there seemed to be an issue at PhotoBucket today. SORRY dial ups.

WATER

4-1.jpg


3-2.jpg


2-2.jpg


1-2.jpg



Diffeerent job more water

WATERONBOLTEDPRESSURESWITCH2.jpg


WATERONBOLTEDPRESSURESWITCH3.jpg
 
drbond24

drbond24

Senior Member
Location
Barboursville, West Virginia
brian john said:
The conductors on the bus are not from the blow up? That is IMO just an electricians LACK OF CARE.
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We didn't actually have a blow up, I was just asking for videos and/or pictures so I could demonstrate to those that needed convincing that this was a very dangerous situation. It still took them two weeks to get around to repairing it after it was discovered.
 
drbond24

drbond24

Senior Member
Location
Barboursville, West Virginia
brian john said:
It had been that way for how long?
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Nobody knows. We've had electricians working in and around that switchgear for months. Any of them could have done it, or it could have already been there for quite a while and they just noticed it. We've rearranged the breakers in that gear several times lately, so it has probably been there a few months but less than a year.
 
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