A.B. Chance porcelain cutouts

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CL&P Will Remove Pole-Top Devices



By DAVID OWENS
Courant Staff Writer

April 3 2006

Although Connecticut Light & Power Co. insists that a trouble-prone pole-top device cannot be conclusively linked to the fire that destroyed a restaurant and four cars last May in Farmington, the utility company plans to spend $4.5 million a year over the next three years to remove every A.B. Chance porcelain cutout from its system.

CL&P's decision to remove the A.B. Chance porcelain cutouts came about during a state Department of Public Utility Control investigation into the performance of such devices and the fire that destroyed a Dunkin' Donuts restaurant along Route 4.

Tragedy was averted in that fire when a cool-headed restaurant manager locked the restaurant's front door and herded customers and employees out the back to safety. Police and firefighters said it was a miracle no one was killed.

The fire was touched off when a 23,000-volt power line fell to the ground, the town fire marshal determined. A failed A.B. Chance cutout is suspected of causing that line to fall.

CL&P estimates 23,800 A.B. Chance cutouts remained on its system at the end of 2005 and that by targeting at least 8,200 a year they will all be gone by the end of 2008. There are 170,000 cutouts on the CL&P system.

Cutouts are protective devices placed on utility systems that halt the flow of electricity if there is a surge, protecting transformers and other equipment the same way a circuit breaker protects a home. A.B. Chance, a division of Orange, Conn.-based Hubbell Inc., is one of the largest suppliers of cutouts to electric utilities.

A spokesman for Hubbell Inc. said he would have to read the draft decision before commenting and did not respond to subsequent requests for comment.

The DPUC, in a draft decision issued last week, adopted CL&P's removal plan and ordered the utility to report once a year until the A.B. Chance cutouts are gone. Mitch Gross, a CL&P spokesman, said the utility does not comment on draft decisions. He also refused to comment on what prompted CL&P's nine-fold increase in its removal plan.

The DPUC investigation was ordered by Gov. M. Jodi Rell after a Courant investigation into the May fire found that A.B. Chance cutouts fail at a troubling rate in northern climates, including New England, and pointed to the failed cutout as the probable cause of the Farmington fire. A similar incident in Goshen in April 2004 damaged a home's electrical system and some appliances. At least two other utilities, Pennsylvania Power & Light and the Washington Electric Co-operative in Vermont, are removing A.B. Chance cutouts from their systems. The Vermont co-op has gone so far as to label the Chance cutouts as "lemons."

In its draft decision, DPUC heeded CL&P's call not to attribute the fire to the failed cutout, although hearing officer Donald W. Downes did find that "failure of a cutout manufactured by A.B. Chance Co. is the most probable cause."

"Regardless of the cause of that fire," Downes continued, "Chance cutouts are known to be failing at an escalating rate, presenting safety issues to the public and to utility employees. The department believes that it is important to remove the devices from the electric system in a deliberate manner, and therefore it will monitor their removal."

In testimony to the DPUC, Lauren E. Gaunt, a principal engineer for CL&P, said the company's experience with A.B. Chance cutouts is that they fail at a higher rate than cutouts manufactured by competitor S&C Electric. In one statement to DPUC, Gaunt said a study in 2000 determined that two S&C cutouts, out of 84,000 purchased, had failed during the previous decade, yielding a failure rate of 0.002 percent. During the same period, 42 A.B. Chance cutouts, out of 66,000 purchased, failed. That yielded a failure rate of 0.06 percent, a failure rate 30 times higher than the failure rate of S&C cutouts.

During a follow-up study in 2005, the A.B. Chance numbers were even worse. The failure rate had increased to 1.3 to 1.4 percent, Gaunt testified during a DPUC hearing in January.

Last September, a CL&P spokeswoman said the company planned to remove 4,000 A.B. Chance cutouts a year from its system. Gaunt, in testimony to DPUC, said that process would have taken 10 to 12 years. He did not explain why CL&P decided to replace the cutouts at a faster pace.

CL&P told the DPUC that it stopped buying Chance cutouts in 1998 because Chance moved its factory to Mexico and CL&P was not confident Chance's quality control practices met its standards.

Two CL&P managers, in a letter to the Hartford office of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, attributed the failure of A.B. Chance porcelain cutouts to cracks in cemented connections to metal hardware as well as cracks in the glazing on the porcelain. The cracks allow moisture to get into the porcelain or the cemented connections. During the freeze-thaw cycle, the cracks widen. Those cracks can allow electricity to go where it shouldn't, such as the metal bracket holding the cutout to a utility pole, or cause the entire cutout to come apart.

CL&P no longer installs porcelain cutouts. The new cutouts have polymer insulators.

CL&P says that the remaining A.B. Chance porcelain cutouts on its system do not pose a significant risk to the public or to its employees. A lawyer for the state Office of Consumer Counsel, in a brief filed with DPUC, disagreed.

"The hazard posed by these faulty pieces of vital equipment could be rather grave," William L. Vallee Jr. wrote. "It is entirely possible that loss of life and extensive property damage could result from the continued use of this equipment in the field."

An official with a union that represents CL&P line workers said he remains concerned workers will be at risk working with the Chance cutouts. The draft decision "definitely puts some constraints on the company, but it doesn't help us as far as a procedure to do it," said John Unikas of Local 420 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Cutouts "should be de-energized before we tackle them."

DPUC plans to render its final decision on the investigation April 19.
Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant