4Waters
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2016
- Messages
- 35,103
- Reaction score
- 88,984
We know grandpa. Roll eyes emoji LOL.
I feel stupid sometimes because I'm always preaching about safety, but I can't pass up this one.
I want to warn everyone about the dangers of downed power lines, and how they can kill you even when they are obviously deenergized.
Utility lines are protected by circuit breakers, just like your home power is. The difference is that utility circuit breakers are electrically operated, most of the time by DC backed up by batteries.
When a line goes down and shorts to ground, it'll trip the breaker. The life threatening danger comes after that. The breaker will automatically reclose in an effort to clear the fault, if, for example, the wind has caused two conductors to touch each other. If they aren't touching when the breaker recloses, the power is restored.
There are situations where the automated system will attempt to reclose the breaker several times. If you are near the downed line, you can be killed when trees, cars, buildings, etc. touching the line are energized when the breaker recloses.
Other times the utility will respond to downed lines, repair them, sometimes taking hours, and radio the system operator to reenergize the line.
If the line is grounded somewhere else that they aren't aware of, downed lines that have been dead for hours can become live again. If the arcing current to ground doesn't exceed the breaker capacity, the line will continue to be energized, like the first video above shows.
Never, ever drive over or touch downed lines, and stay away from any structures near the lines. They can become energized at any time, even when they've been dead for extended periods.
Here's a video of a downed line being reenergized by an automatic recloser...
.
Shit forgot we have that emoji better