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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Aug 2002
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    Buffalo
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    3,000

    Default A.B. Chance porcelain cutouts

    Featured Sponsor

    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

  2. #2
    42linehand Guest

    Default CL&P

    I work for a union contractor in CT and I am currently employed by a small utility Company. We are still installing porcelain cut outs. I would hope that this info would be dispersed to all utility companys as well as local unions. I will give CL&P a big adaboy for their efforts to remove these hazards.

  3. #3
    57hand Guest

    Default

    Who is responsable for financing a project of this magnitude? On a nationwide and even a global scale it would have to take millions upon millions of dollars to implement the replacement of these cut-outs. I personally feel that CHANCE should be held accountable. Does anyone know if they(CHANCE) are taking resposability?

  4. #4

    Default cutout question

    Have These Cutout Given Anyone Else Probelms In The Us.like Texas
    Or Is Just In Cold Weather Areas Like Up North.
    I Have To Agree That All Those Co. Using Mexico To Make There
    Products Could Have Problem With There Product.i Think There Is
    Little Quality Control.profits Or Everything Else!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Lets All Be Safe And Protect Ourself.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Aug 2002
    Location
    Buffalo
    Posts
    3,000

    Default

    Its mostly a cold climate problem. The constant freeze-thaw cycle is what causes all the problems. Some sort of defect in the manufacturing process allows tiny cracks to form in the porcelain. moisture gets in the tiny cracks and over time the freeze-thaw cycle destroys the cutout.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Dec 2003
    Location
    Houston, twenty yrs at HL&P then 3 yrs on the road.
    Posts
    883

    Default I learned a lot about the integrity of material in my 15 yrs as a night troubleman.

    CenterPoint Energy/ Reliant / Houston Lighting and Power in Houston went to Chance switches about eight years ago... Prior to that they were using Kearneys... I loved the Kearneys... I could hang a Kearney door blindfolded... They almost always opened when they operated... In the middle of the night you could weld a door shut to save it for daylight... About the only problem they had was that after a lot of faults a small piece of the brass tip where the barrel contacts the top of the switch, sometimes breaks off... I carried new barrels on the truck and we were back in bussiness... When the Chance switches failed, rarely did a new barrel fix it... The switch had to be replaced... The Kearneys last forever too... Thus they can command the price they do... They are good switches... How much does it cost to send a lineman up the pole to replace a chance... not to mention the lost revenue from the meters not spinning...

    The Chance barrells are bastards to hang.. the horns that hold the door are made of crap... they warp under heavy load... they get bent easy before installation... when they blow, sometimes the barrell just jumps up and down and stays closed... If ya got a good fault on the cable or line, the barrell will then start tracking over, small at first then grow a fire till the barrel melts apart and operates the circuit, catches the pole or fire or burns a building down in the process... sometimes when the barrel does open in a fault, and it flips down hard it swings out of the saddle and comes down after the lineman on the end of the long stick... How do I know? I been the lineman on the end of the longstick...
    .... On top of the door they got two differant kinds of metal with a little dowel pin that runs thru the whole mess. In the midde of the two pieces of metal they got a crap spring that is the cause of most of the problems with this switch... In manufacturing it sometimes gets wedged in there a little cocked which messes with how tight the door is held in... The metal in the springs on some is harder than on others probably from lack of quality control.. But in any event they are crap and when the get heated up one time from fault current or heavy load they turn blue and the integrity of the metal is defunct... It is At this point when they don't open after the fuse melts... The metals expand and contract at different rates causing all the stuff on top of the switch to warp... I complained to anybody that would listen when we first started using them; imagine that, but to no avail... The answer I got, was that this switch was one third the price of the Kearneys... Made in Mexico by slave labor don't ya know... The design from the get go is bad... Then add to that slave labor putting it togather...


    My brother is a buyer for a large plumbing company... a company invited him to Mexico to take a tour of their factory... During the tour it was explained that quality control integrity was maintained by always having more experienced hands working with scrubs at maintained ratios. The color of their smocks indicated their level of experince... Green being the least experienced... as this was being explained my brother looked around and noticed that out of the hundred guys in this section there were only two without green smocks... He commented to the fella running the tour, that they should at least break the experienced smocks out when the tours of American buyers are run thru...

    After about three years of using these things the company outlawed them on Cap Banks... and we went around and replaced all the chance switches that had been installed on the caps...

    Just curious... How do the Kearneys fare in the ice?
    Last edited by CenterPointEX; 04-04-2006 at 09:46 PM.
    2Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial matters? 3Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! 1Corinthians 6

  7. #7
    42linehand Guest

    Default

    The problem is in the cold weather climate. A problem that we see up here is that on the top of the porcelain cutouts their an indention in the porcelain about the size of a half dollar. In the winter time water gets in their and turns to ice. When the ice expands it breaks the porcelain.

  8. #8
    t-shooter Guest

    Default

    The real story here is that there was a lineman in the donut shop on his day off when the cutout broke and primary came down. He was the one who told the manager to lock the front door and take the customers out the back door. He did not want the credit for it. He was the real hero in this case. I work with him.

  9. #9

    Default Porcelain Cutout Replacement

    Porcelain insulated cutouts have been in use in the electrical industry for many decades. The cutout is a pole-mounted device used to disconnect or reconnect equipment to a source of electricity. Throughout that time the designs and manufacturing processes have changed somewhat but the basic insulating material used has always been porcelain. Porcelain was the material of choice by manufacturers not just for cutouts but for most electrical equipment that required an insulating value, for example, insulators, arresters
    and bushings. Porcelain, being composed primarily of sand, was an abundant raw material, was inexpensive to manufacture, was durable and didn’t require any specialized or advanced technology. However, porcelain for all its advantages did have drawbacks. In the early 1980’s large numbers of porcelain insulators began failing. “Cement growth” was causing insulators to crack. The expansion and contraction of the adhesive interface which joined the porcelain to the hardware (connector) caused stresses on the porcelain. These stresses caused small cracks to appear in the porcelain which eventually lead to an electrical and/or mechanical failure of the porcelain insulator. Transmission and distribution insulators had been the focus of the industry’s attention throughout most of the 1980’s and 1990’s. Many tens of millions of dollars have been spent to rectify the problem of defective porcelain insulators. During the past several years many utilities throughout North America have seen increasing failures of their porcelain insulated cutouts. The mode of failure is very similar to that of insulators. Small cracks in the porcelain initially appear near the interface between the porcelain and hardware. These fractures eventually lead to a mechanical failure of the cutout. Cement growth is the likely cause of the initial cracks. The breakage of porcelain insulated cutouts at Newfoundland Power is of concern from a safety and reliability perspective. During cutout operation the porcelain can break causing the cutout to separate into two parts. This creates a hazard to line personnel operating the cutout and can cause outages to customers. Multiple Canadian utilities in the Atlantic region including Nova Scotia Power, Maritime Electric and New Brunswick Power have experienced similar problems with porcelain cutouts during the past few years. Throughout North America, utilities such as B.C. Hydro, American Electric Power and Public Service Electric & Gas have been concerned with the increased rise in the number of cutouts failing on their distribution systems. A survey of Canadian utilities conducted in 2001 by B.C. Hydro identifies the increasing concern of several utilities about this trend.

    Hazards of Porcelain Cutouts
    The cutout is a pole mounted device used to disconnect or reconnect electrical equipment to a source of electricity. Every non CSP transformer has a cutout attached to it. Each cutout has a fuse built into it designed to melt when an overload occurs in the transformer itself or the wires serving the customers attached to the transformer. Throughout the Company many hundreds of cutouts are opened and closed every week. Each one of these operations is done while the cutout and the lines and other equipment adjacent to the cutout is energized, therefore each time the cutout is operated there is a potential hazard from cutout breakage. The lineperson typically operates the cutout using “hotstick” while they are positioned in the pole or the bucket of a line truck. This puts the lineperson in close proximity to the cutout. Should the cutout break while being operated the lineperson may be placed in a dangerous and unsafe situation.

    CEA Study
    The Canadian Electricity Association (CEA) commissioned a research study of the porcelain cutout breakage issue in 2002. This study was initiated because there was enough concern by many Canadian utilities to warrant further investigation into the problem. The objective of this research was to determine whether a method is available or could be developed to effectively evaluate the “in situ” condition of a cutout prior to operation. The research concluded that there was no reliable existing instrument or method that could reasonably detect incipient failure of a porcelain cutout. The report has been completed by Powertech Labs and is scheduled for release in August, 2003.

    Alternatives to Porcelain Cutouts
    During the past 20 years there have been advances in the development of non-ceramic or synthetic material for use as insulators in the electrical industry. This material is most often polymer based. At the distribution level, the main focus of manufacturers has been directed to the replacement of porcelain with polymer material in insulators and lightning arresters. The industry has been quite successful in this regard with most suspension insulators and lightning arresters manufactured today being of a polymer design. As far as cutouts were concerned, until very recently there was no real alternative to the porcelain cutout. However, in 2000 an American company, PLH Manufacturing Co., developed the first polymer insulated cutout. Since then two other manufacturers have developed or are developing polymer type cutouts in response to the growing demand by utilities throughout North America. One of the advantages of polymer material is that it is not brittle like porcelain and therefore it will not develop cracks and shatter in the way porcelain does. This reduces the risk to linepersons.

    Safety and Reliability
    The two principal drivers for change to the polymer insulated cutout standard are safety and reliability. Polymer cutouts can effectively eliminate the hazard to linepersons that now exists when porcelain cutouts fail. However, there may still be a risk to linepersons operating the many thousands of existing porcelain cutouts in service. Utilities can mitigate risk as much as possible by ensuring an increased risk assessment and awareness among linepersons and a review of work methods. As with safety, the increased use of polymer cutouts will have a positive effect on customer reliability, as each broken cutout, in most instances, represents as outage in excess of two hours.

    The following action is recommended with respect to porcelain cutouts.
    1. Adopt polymer insulated cutouts as the new cutout standard.
    2. Discontinue the use of porcelain cutouts.
    3. As part of the annual distribution line inspection program identify defective cutouts i.e. ones that have visible evidence of cracks.
    4. In the year following the annual inspection remove the defective cutout from service.
    5. Monitor future porcelain cutout failures to determine whether additional measures such as an accelerated replacement program is necessary.

  10. #10
    t-shooter Guest

    Default Dramatic pictures

    Featured Sponsorr

    Check out this site for the dramatic pictures of the fire caused by Chance
    cutout failure in Farmington Ct.


    http://www.farmingtonfire.com/photo_...2005/index.htm

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