XF explosion at Candlestick Park

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kwired said:
Kind of scary isn't it?

You are over half the continent away from the place, yet if you had some bad intentions you already have enough information to start a plan of attack. And you did not use any top secret spy technology to acquire your information.
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so very true, but no different then any other weapon or thing used as one, its the person using it not the weapon, I use GE to find customers houses manytimes as GPS doesnt always pinpont the correct one, also to look at a job site before going to it, it does have many good things we can use in our work.
 
hurk27 said:
so very true, but no different then any other weapon or thing used as one, its the person using it not the weapon, I use GE to find customers houses manytimes as GPS doesnt always pinpont the correct one, also to look at a job site before going to it, it does have many good things we can use in our work.
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The difference is todays lazy menace to society does not have to work as hard at his job as he did 20 years ago, but then a lot of others don't have to work as hard at their jobs either. Probably many potential attacks of some kind are also cyber policed and stopped from someone someones fingertips instead of getting up and giving much physical effort.

Anybody that died before about 1950 would never believe any of this, and probably quite a few up to about 1980 also.
After that it would probably not be too suprising of information, but they may be expecting a later date than 2011 for some of the things we have to happen, or for it to be top secret military intelligence technology.

We still need to send unmanned spycraft into some countries to gather intelligence, yet they can gather a lot of similar information from us just with an internet connection that is readily available to almost everyone.

Hope I don't hijack the thread with this. That would also be terroristic action in a way, I guess;)
 
I've used GE and Google Maps Street View on potential customers, just to see if they are legit. One time I had an inquiry for a large VFD project and when I looked up the guy's company name, then the address and saw where he supposedly worked, it was a home address of a place with a car overturned in the front yard and an 8 x 10 shed in the back with a bunch of stuff covered by tarps. Not that there is anything wrong with that per se, but I doubted the legitimacy of his wanting to hire me to design and build a $300k VFD package for a beverage bottler. It was more likely the guy worked for a competitor and wanted to have me price it for him so he could charge a little less and a not have to bother working up the price. It's been known to happen.
 
Jraef said:
I've used GE and Google Maps Street View on potential customers, just to see if they are legit. One time I had an inquiry for a large VFD project and when I looked up the guy's company name, then the address and saw where he supposedly worked, it was a home address of a place with a car overturned in the front yard and an 8 x 10 shed in the back with a bunch of stuff covered by tarps. Not that there is anything wrong with that per se, but I doubted the legitimacy of his wanting to hire me to design and build a $300k VFD package for a beverage bottler. It was more likely the guy worked for a competitor and wanted to have me price it for him so he could charge a little less and a not have to bother working up the price. It's been known to happen.
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Or he maybe he was looking into expanding his whiskey still operation:lol:
 
Candlestick Park Outage

Candlestick Park Outage

Gentleman
It just so happens that my firm is directly involved with the primary electrical distribution at this park.
In a sense I predicted this fiasco to my co-workers and have to be carefull due to legal reasons with what I say here.
The park is fed by 2 PG&E 12KV lines that feed a Westinghouse ATS. Yes, GE shows the 2 PG&E lines on a road up the hill from the underground feed to the ATS. It is the only ATS of this type I have seen in my 40yrs in the electrical buisness. (this was before the time of MV vacuum breakers, but it works) The ATS uses 2 West WLI 12kv fused switches with motor operators. Simple relay logic with electromechanical relays and Agastat timers control the transfer from one line to the other, the preferred source and the alternate source. I repaired this switch in 2008 when it would not automatically transfer from line 2 to line 1 (bad Agastat timer)
According to the EC of record, the first outage was caused by a faulted PG&E pole transformer. The EC said that the ATS
transferred to the second line just fine after the first line went down. Copper theft was the explanation for the XF fault but the jury is still out on that. The second outage I was told was caused by a blown fuse: maybe because of the inrush current
to the lights or just an old weak fuse (LV or MV?)
Not sure if it was a utility fuse or a fuse in one of the 5 unit substations (?) that supplies the park.
Anyway, I will report any latest info as it comes available. Pls post any new info you may uncover.
 
PG&E confirmed today that the first fault was initiated by a failed splice and that they are now going to go replace ALL of the splices in the vicinity of the stadium.

So tonytonton, is that maybe the result of the copper theft you referred to? Is PG&E having to continually replace and splice MV lines because prople are stealing them? Sad state of affairs if that's the case.
 
Don't they usually catch the thieves that try to steal copper from MV lines? Like, catch them dead right next to the line.
 
Incident Update

Incident Update

I spoke with the EC last week and he reported that a bad splice caused the the pole transformer to fault. This confirms Jaref's post, earlier. Copper theft related? Don't know yet.
He said the second outage (game second quarter)was park related. Something about a spike on the line taking out the computer that controls the tower lights. The gen-set backup system failed, not sure if gen did not start or the LV ATS failed to transfer the load. They had to manually switch the load over to the genset. That caused the delay. Also if they are HID (sodium vapor?)lights then there is a delay before they come to full brightness. I will know more this week as the customer has asked us to standby with PG&E and park people when they do a transfer test of the 12KV ATS.
BTW he also said that PG&E changed the 12KV line configuration. Originally, the 2 lines were shared with residential customers. Now it is suppose to be a dedicated line direct from the substation (would that be Martin Sub, anyone?)
 
tonytonon said:
I spoke with the EC last week and he reported that a bad splice caused the the pole transformer to fault. This confirms Jaref's post, earlier. Copper theft related? Don't know yet.
He said the second outage (game second quarter)was park related. Something about a spike on the line taking out the computer that controls the tower lights. The gen-set backup system failed, not sure if gen did not start or the LV ATS failed to transfer the load. They had to manually switch the load over to the genset. That caused the delay. Also if they are HID (sodium vapor?)lights then there is a delay before they come to full brightness. I will know more this week as the customer has asked us to standby with PG&E and park people when they do a transfer test of the 12KV ATS.
BTW he also said that PG&E changed the 12KV line configuration. Originally, the 2 lines were shared with residential customers. Now it is suppose to be a dedicated line direct from the substation (would that be Martin Sub, anyone?)
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The lights most are likely are Pulse start 1500 watt or 2000 watt metal halide, which still has a 2-3 min. re-strike time, just not as bad as HPS.
 
Well, I'm glad I started the thread and get to read everybody's responses, especially tonytonon's, now that i'm back from vacation.

As for using Google Earth to diagnose the problem location from many many miles away (well, actually just a few miles for me), it actually wouldn't have been possible without the blimp shot. :D
 
Update

Update

We were asked to standby last Tue & Wed while they performed transfer tests on the park's Westinghouse 12KV automatic transfer switch. Park engineers, PG&E, San Francisco Engineering Service, and the EC (about 12 people) were there the first day when they switched the preferred source switch from S2 to S1. The motor operators opened switch 2 and closed switch 1 to the second 12KV line. The following day the crowd got larger with the FD and press watching (27 people) when PG&E opened the breaker at Martin substation that feeds S1. This time a true outage was simulated and the TD relays (ATS) operated (set 5 sec) before the transfer to S2 occured. All tests were a success.
The title of the opening post is a misnomer. No transformers were involved in the first outage. A splice in one of the cables of the overhead for source S2 (PG&E) came apart. In doing so it came into contact with the other 2 phases causing a phase to phase short. This accounts for the small initial flash and then larger one in the video. It is not known why the 12KV ATS did not automatically transfer the load to S1 right after the outage. The park engineers had to manually (pushbuttons) transfer the load to S1.
The second outage was caused by a disruption of power to the Honeywell BMS system that controls all the tower lights ( yes hurk27, you were correct they are 1500W metal halide.) No backup UPS was ever installed to feed the BMS when it was put in (Duh!?!?!) The 208V BMS generator started but the ATS did not transfer the load. The engineer had to manually transfer to emergency.
SFES (who I subcontract to) was asked to provide a quote on performing PM & testing of the 13 MV & LV unit substations that supply power to the park.:D
Photos are attached.
 

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Thanks for the update tonytonon.

Yeah when I started the thread I was just going off media reports. Once I saw the lines involved (in Google Earth) I realized there were not likely any transformers involved in the initial problem. Just the media getting things wrong as they so often do.
 
Unless someone with qualifications tells the media differently any flash occuring on a power system is either a transformer explosion or a short.
 
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