|
North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: POWER: San Mateo/San Francisco power outage report
On Wed, Dec 09, 1998 at 07:21:18AM -0800, Jerry Scharf wrote: > One other thing to remember, there isn't a whole lot of risk working on a > router outage. When you're restoring electric service, you have to go slower > so you keep the possibility of frying a lineman to a minimum. I spent a few >weeks installing power line electronic equipment in a 115kv substation and got > a whole new level of respect. You couldn't pay me enough to do that work (but > I like their trucks.) > > jerry Yeah, your first mistake around that kind of energy is almost always your last. I used to a lot of work with embedded control systems in very-high-power microwave transmitter gear (ie: 25KW stuff). Those things run around with several tens of KV at ~2A (yes, that's AMPS) in the HV drawer. Even "pedestrian" HPA hardware (3kw Cband stuff) has a couple hundred ma in the HV drawer, which at 20kv is more than enough to fry you very dead. If you manage to route that kind of energy through yourself (and it WILL jump air gaps at that voltage) they don't even bother with paramedics - just call the coroner. That ignores the risk from the emitted microwave energy itself, which is substantial as well (directly in the front of the antenna the ERP of these things can be in the range of a couple of MW - more than enough to cause you all kinds of physiological trouble (like death)) And that's NOTHING compared to the energy levels running around in circuits at 115kv substations! -- -- Karl Denninger ([email protected]) http://www.mcs.net/~karl I ain't even *authorized* to speak for anyone other than myself, so give up now on trying to associate my words with any particular organization.
|