Stolen CL&P Transformer Causes Haz-Mat Spill

[Carl WA1KPD]

Maybe they were planning to STRAP?

http://www.courant.com/community/south-windsor/hc-south-windsor-clp-pcb-1110-20111109,0,5843953.story
This must be for the mod section of the rig built with the famous Hosstraders Xfrmr......


Carl
/KPD

[W1ATR]

Eh, the dummies lost my delivery. 

Everyone needs a power supply with a bigass pole pig lurking around their junkbox just in case.

[k4kyv]

Mine were taken out of the oil and operated in open-air outside the case.  A 3-KVA pole pig running dry outside the case works just fine in a 1 KW transmitter.  I haven't used them in years, but I still have a couple and they have been out of the oil so long that the smell has gone away.

In years past, I can remember plunging down to my elbows in transformer oil to remove pole pigs from the tank, splitting a knuckle or two when the wrench slipped, and eating a sandwich for lunch afterwards without thoroughly scrubbing my hands.

[KA2DZT]

Mine were taken out of the oil and operated in open-air outside the case.  A 3-KVA pole pig running dry outside the case works just fine in a 1 KW transmitter.  I haven't used them in years, but I still have a couple and they have been out of the oil so long that the smell has gone away.

In years past, I can remember plunging down to my elbows in transformer oil to remove pole pigs from the tank, splitting a knuckle or two when the wrench slipped, and eating a sandwich for lunch after wards without thoroughly scrubbing my hands.

Well Don, now we know how you got into the condition you're in.

BTW I always wash my hands before I eat.

Fred

[W1AEX]

Interesting story Carl. I wonder what that would have fetched in the scrap metal market? From the picture in the article, I can't get over how much Richard Simmons has changed. Looks like life in Enfield has been a hard turn for him now that he can't be a guest on Oprah.

[WA1GFZ]

big times in my town these days. There was a fried one around the corner from my street. Looked like it was on fire and burned the outside paint

[WA3VJB]

big times in my town these days. There was a fried one around the corner from my street...

I thought of you when I read the posting.  Didn't you want something for 'the beach house rig' ?

But then I said wait, these guys have the perfect defense.  "We are environmentalists, and we took the transformer to keep it from leaking on the ground some more."

[The Slab Bacon]

They're pretty kool when they blow!! I watched one 2 streets over blow some years back. A deep hollow sounding boom followed by a huge orange fireball.

It blew from overload. 100+ degree day, lots of A/Cs took it out!!

[KM1H]

Sounds like envirobullturds to me. Since when have PCB's been allowed to be still used, even if the transformer is 40 years old?

Somebody in CT needs to see the credentials of the make believe reporter and the DEEP loser and have some fun

[KA2DZT]

Sounds like envirobullturds to me. Since when have PCB's been allowed to be still used, even if the transformer is 40 years old?

Somebody in CT needs to see the credentials of the make believe reporter and the DEEP loser and have some fun

I agree,  not likely the xfmr had any PCB oil in it.

Fred

[WA1GFZ]

I know of transformers at least 40 years old

[KM1H]

I know of pole pig transformers that were old in the 50's but they aint up on poles any longer

[W1AEX]

I know of transformers at least 40 years old

Indeed. One of the knocks on CL&P is that they have not made any effort at all to upgrade most of the residential lines in their working area. The area I live in was built in the late '50's and most of the poles and associated hardware are 60+ years old. I chatted with an electrical crew from Ohio (AEP) as they reattached my service drop. They mentioned three things about CL&P that really irked them:

1. When they arrived in Connecticut with their truck convoy, they rolled into the main CL&P facility to get stocked up with parts and were told that there was nothing in inventory. They had to use what they had on the truck and were told to just patch things back together.

2. They were horrified at the condition of the grid in the areas that they were deployed to. They said the poles and hardware they were encountering would have been rebuilt or replaced 20 - 30 years ago if this was Ohio.

3. They were ticked off because they had not yet been paid/reimbursed for the work they did up here following their deployment after hurricane Irene. They said that most of their trucks had been deployed to New York and New Jersey for that very reason, and only a limited number were deployed to work with CL&P.

They were nice guys and really had no axe to grind. They were just describing the situation as they saw it. Based upon some of the crappy electrical infrastructure I have seen throughout CT I tend to believe them.

Rob W1AEX

[WA1GFZ]

I guess he was one of the lucky guys.
Many showed up with no place to sleep because all the local hotels were full.
CL&P is a farce I know a bunch of guys who work for them. All about cash in the CEO's pocket. They got rid of most of their service crews to save money.
I saw a lot of copper primary wire on the ground.
Rob, my Boss lives in your area and got power yesterday around noon.

[K1JJ]

Rob,

The way the Hftd Courant has been beating up CL&P lately, your post would make excellent material for the editorial page. I'll bet people are not aware of how old and beat up the hardware and poles are.   The Ohio perspective is what's needed.

Lots of the poles snapped in the storm. Plus the RFI from arcing splices. I've called them before about arcing, but had no luck.  The only time it worked was when I went up to the house of a Yuppie and told him from the sound of my car AM receiver his pole pig could blow up at any minute.   You can bet he called and it was fixed the next day.

Seems they respond only when there is immediate danger.

Actually we need to take some of that QE3 money and invest it into underground power for the entire nation. Just like the CC days of the depression.

T

[N4LTA]

Almost all pole transformers are and have always been filled with mineral oil. Pyranols (PCBs)  were expensive and were used in transformers inside or near buildings where they might be a fire hazzard. Outdoor equipment was almost always filled with mineral oil.

Transformer oil is not toxic. Back in the day before PCBs were made illegal, most of the stored mineral oil used by power companies had some small amounts of PCBs as it was all mixed together. Mostly though, it was just mineral oil.

I have had my arms in pure Pyranol up to the elbows while changing taps on a padmount transformer (it was done with a wrench)

I would not want to eat it any more than I would eat DDT but the dangers of contact with PCB have been overblown.

[flintstone mop]

They're pretty kool when they blow!! I watched one 2 streets over blow some years back. A deep hollow sounding boom followed by a huge orange fireball.

It blew from overload. 100+ degree day, lots of A/Cs took it out!!

There doesn't seem to be too much concern when these things blow when they are in operation hanging on the pole.
I guess spraying the oil all over the neighborhood is better than having it leaking on the street.

[W1AEX]

Rob, my Boss lives in your area and got power yesterday around noon.

Frank - Yah, there was major damage to one stretch of residential primary about 1000 feet away that kept about 8 homes in the dark up until 2 days ago. Something up on the pole holding the transformer for those homes was sizzling and sputtering loud enough to be heard 100 feet away. It also made quite a lot of RFI on 10 and 6 meters until they finally brought a crew back in to clean it up. That pole also held a line amplifier for the cable system that served the 25 homes on my street and the Cox guys would not work on it (understandably) while things were sizzling and sputtering. So... when they brought those homes back online about an hour later I got cable/phone/internet back and rejoined civilization.

Tom - It's almost pathetic to hear our local CT politicians squealing about "unacceptable performance" on the part of CL&P. It's all posturing and noise to deflect criticism of their own failure to pay attention to what they have been "regulating" for decades. It would be amusing if this whole debacle had not resulted in loss of life for a few residents. Maybe something good will come out of it if an aggressive tree cutting program, line maintenance program, and adequate inventory and staff are required. It would also be nice if gas stations were given a compensatory tax break if they install a generator so they can pump gas when the power is out. Of course, that would require vision and a desire to actually solve some problems. Personally, if things follow the usual pattern, a panel of clueless people will be appointed to "study" the problem and they will file a report 6 months from now that no one will ever read, and this experience will fade away in people's memories and it will be business as usual.

The times that I dealt with CL&P to resolve RFI issues I found them to be fairly quick about taking care of stuff, as long as I had located the issue. When something weird happens that the local guys can't find, like the blown lightning arrestor way out in the woods 3/4 of a mile away, then you have to sit on them to bring out the guys from the Power Quality division. They have the resources to track that stuff down and usually can get it taken care of in short order. Unfortunately, you have to go through the CL&P "chain of command" protocol so you'll never get to talk to them until they are told to call you by some supervisor sitting in an office who has gotten sick of listening to your complaints. Ah well, as Walter Cronkite used to say, "...And that's the way it is..."

:O)

Rob W1AEX

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

I had the same response from CVPS in VT, Rob. The joke was that I was their professional street light troubleshooter, since they'd wipe out reception for me when they started to fail. So long as I gave them the pole number, it was generally fixed same day, several days at the most. When an idiot drunk driving without a license hit the pole across the street and tore my feed off the side of the house, they were there the next morning making it as good or better than new, on a cold, windy, snowy winter day.

They get a lot of credit for improving the service there. When I bought the place in '94, we had power outages 5-6 times a year or more. The last 10 years of living there, it was down to one every year or two.

Sounds like CT has made its bed and now has to lay in it. The same nitwits are in control of VT now, and they are traveling down a similar path: loads of regulation, spotty enforcement at best if it doesn't affect tourism. Spent the last couple days on the phone with the contractor who is working on the VT house. He's from Portland OR and said as crazy as the regulations are out there, VT is worse. The taxes just haven't caught up (yet).

big times in my town these days. There was a fried one around the corner from my street...

I thought of you when I read the posting.  Didn't you want something for 'the beach house rig' ?

Frank got his pole pigs at Hopkinton a few years back. 

[k4kyv]

I would not want to eat it any more than I would eat DDT but the dangers of contact with PCB have been overblown.

Acute exposure is said to result in skin lesions and dermatitis, but the cancer and birth defects scare is mostly speculative.  The stuff does stay in the fatty tissues of the body more or less permanently.

I once read a story (in National Geographic?) that an unknown tribe of people were discovered in some remote island near Indonesia. They lived on a mountainous island, and had rarely ventured off their plateau; even though they were only about 50 miles from the ocean, there was no word for sea or ocean in their language. After contact was made with those people and communication with the outside world was established, some agreed to submit to medical tests.  Traces of PCB were found in their bodies, apparently coming up the food chain via ocean fish and then birds and other creatures on the island.

PCB was used not only in transformers and capacitors; a well-kept secret is that it was also used in brake fluid until sometime in the 60s when concerns over its toxicity began to propagate.  Given that small amounts of brake fluid leak out all the time, and the volume of automobile traffic world-wide, the amount of PCB introduced into the environment by transformers and capacitors is probably minuscule compared to what leaked out of cars over the decades.

PCB is ideal for transformer and capacitor dielectrics because it is both an excellent electrical insulator and thermal conductor.  Usually, a substance that conducts heat well also conducts electricity well and vice versa.

One of the worries expressed by the EPA was, although PCB is normally non-flammable, it is alleged to give off dioxin when subjected to high temperatures and that is nasty stuff.  They were afraid of what would happen if the building housing the equipment that contained it, caught fire.

My shack would  probably be considered a mini-Love Canal because of all the mercury rectifiers in the rigs and spare tube collection, the spools of lead solder I have managed to hoard over the years, and the PCB in my collection of oil capacitors, some of which are quite large and marked "G-E Pyronol". Not to mention all the lead paint I (and previous owners) have scraped off the 80 y.o. building, and off my 150 y.o. farm house.

[WA1GFZ]

I run a pair of CG310's I think you saw them

[w1vtp]

<snip>

In years past, I can remember plunging down to my elbows in transformer oil to remove pole pigs from the tank, splitting a knuckle or two when the wrench slipped, and eating a sandwich for lunch afterwards without thoroughly scrubbing my hands.

Me too, Don.  I had a 220 <--- 4200 pole pig that I gave to Steve WA1HUD decades ago - I think he still has it.  I took a gallon of the oil out of it to put in my Cantenna.  Just plunged my hand into it using a paper cup and filled the Cantenna up.  I still have that Cantenna -- somewhere.  It disappeared during the move back into the new shack. It's lurking somewhere in the shop section.

I like the idea of taking the trannie out of the oil.  But then, what the heck would I do with the case / oil?  And where would I drip - dry the trannie from its oil? 

So far at 74, no problems. Guess I'm a time-bomb ticking.

Al

[w1vtp]

Didn't find anything in my favorite ham call lookup on these two guys

http://www.hamcalllookup.com/

Nice site. Wonder if it's a spin off of the Univ of Arkansas call sign lookup?

Still there BTW

http://callsign.ualr.edu/callsign.shtml

Al

[W1RKW]

I concur with Mr. Vu, et al.   When we first moved out here we had 2 or 3 outages per month for no explainable reason over the course of a year or so.  Our main circuit ran down Rt. 16 to a pole pig on a side road.  One time my wife and I were throwing a family party the power had dropped 2 hours before everyone arrived.  I went off the deep end with CL&P.  I called them every 15 minutes to get someone down to simply reset the breaker.  I even volunteered to climb the pole and reset it myself figuring that maybe they'd think I was nuts enough to do it and send someone pronto. The family gathering went on as planned despite no power and power was restored a few hours later.

The next day I was contacted by the manager of our area and he stopped by the house and laid out his plans for fixing the problem.  He showed me how our neighborhood was served and the circuits in the area.  What CL&P did was replace all the breakers along the line and put in a larger pole pig.  The reasoning was that the new neighborhoods including mine were not served by a large enough pig.  CL&P did what they said and power interruptions disappeared for several years.  Excluding these 2 recent storms we've had less than 5 outages over 7 years. The outages we've had were due to car accidents so CL&Ps re-engineering of the circuit was what was needed.  I became a hero in our neighborhood.

We did invest in a backup power supply because at that time I did not trust the system but it worked well afterwards. 

The snow storm, our outage was caused by an open breaker on our circuit. I figure a branch was laid over due to weight and when the snow melted the branch cleared itself.  There was no damage to overhead wires.  Eventually we were back online. 

The point, I agree. CL&P is behind in keeping things up to date. Though I think in light of this current situation they did the best they could do.  Having back up power, the whole beating they're taking is fomented by the press  but was a non-issue since we were prepared.

[W1ATR]

Here's a stupid question. Is it actually legal to own one in the first place? I've had mine (pictured in my above post) forever and it came from a trade with another guy that wanted to go with a bigger final tube. It's a 7200 25kva job I've been planning for years to use in a small amplifier project with a 4cx15000 I have on the shelf. 10m has been doing well so maybe its time for a decent monobander.