Cutout Failures

[Stinger]

We had a post a few months ago on this topic. Iu seems that AB Chance porcilians are at top of the list for failure. National grid has a progrm going that will eventually replace all porcilian cut outs with pollys. There have been numerous incidents of failures and when crews open them they cross their fingers.

[PSE Lineman]

Here we go again. This outfit (PSE) tells us that there are too many to have a program to change them out. They threw out 300,000 as a number. They want us to pack them up and send them away to analize them and then tell us "yup , it failed". In other words they aren't doing dick about it. Every time I come up to a cutout like that , I hit it with me 12 foot stick to see if it will do anything. The visual ain't enough for me. I found another one the other day. There were 4 cutouts on a switch arm just below a 3 phase double dead end. 3 for the line and 1 for the xfmr on the pole. The xfmr cutout was on one side nearest the pole and it was the chance one. The bracket burned the cutout arm off just outside the brace and was in the clear. The one line cutout (not chance , real old) was still bracketed to the piece of burned off arm and hanging by it's line and load jumpers. No outage. The customer called in and said it shouldn't look like that. I have a picture in my camera that is not with me right now but I will post it here as soon as I get a CHANCE , pardon the pun.... Basically around here it's watch your own ass , you know the hazards...

[BULLogna]

We have had a lot of chance cut out failures. We just had a fatality in IL. because of this. A troubleman responded to find a broken cutout with the top half still attached and the bottom half hanging from the tub. as he climbed to lift the stinger the hot cutout half broke loose falling and making contact. Rumors are floating that there was a national recall a few years back by chance on the cutouts that are bad but i haven't seen any paperwork. thanks

[PSE Lineman]

This is the picture of the cutout I took. No outage , just a complaint about the pole "doesn't look like it should"
Damn auto focus!!!

[markwho]

This picture looks all too familiar. We too were thinking the freeze ,thaw and moisture affecting the grout around the steel, but don't think Hawaii weather matches ours here in the northeast. We are using porcelain still, putting up ABB and Coopers right now. We have not had any problem with the other co's. We make sure we take a look before opening. My suggestion was to go back and check date of installation where we had a problem and check jobs involving cutout installation around those dates. But of course this takes time and effort on the company's part. Our company's standpoint is when it breaks fix it. Like mentioned earlier, they have made us a lot of money. But on the other hand have cost the customers also. We have not had too many doors burnt up in the porcelain cutouts. We mostly had these problems with the old G.E. durabute cutouts, there again some of the older units are fairing better than their updated polymer formulation. Some of the newer durabutes would get a alligator effect when aging and track to ground, they sure as hell would not break though!

[tjones]

Thanks for the info on these switches. We have several installed on our system and to my knowledge none have failed. But will have a talk with the guys in the morning about this potential problem.

[Ohiolineman1]

Lets hear some stories about bad porcelain cutouts.
I haven't seen it here at this utility but, at my last utility we had a lot of pole fires, tracking, outages because the cutout fell apart and if you don't look over the cutout before you open it, they will come apart as you open it. In my opinion it's from moisture that gets into the cutout then freezes. It doesnt freeze very hard here so that's why (in my opinion) is why we don't see this problem here. I wonder if utilities in hot dry country have had problems.

We have changed out over 150 bad cutouts and now have a work order to change out 200 more. Be safe Kap

[loodvig]

N.Grid is changing every AB Chance it comes to.

[topgroove]

ab chance used to make their cuttouts right here in america without any problems. awhile back they moved to mexico and began manufacturing these deadly pieces of junk to reduce labor costs and increase proffit. they finally went out of business because of liability issues and now have become known as hubbel. nafta is a real godsend...what an outrage.

[Patriot]

We have had about four 27kv, 100 B.I.L. S&C, cutouts out of 40, not close when the door is fused. THey are new out of the box. You fuse the door and try to close it and the cap hits the spring loaded plate at the top of the door, on the cutout. Not a big deal, but you hang the cutout, put a fuse in, and try to close it and pick up load, and it hits the spring plate. No choice but to open and try and break the arch. Our engineer, says, "just bend the plate up and it works"! DUH, but is the tension spec? Is it lose? And not a good connection????? Junk!


Just had our first 27 kv 150 B.I.L. do the same today.