Dead working explained

[bren guzzi]

Took a few pics from the job we are doing at the moment.

We are working " dead" as usual. But nobody's electricity is off.

The " green generators ". Are fed with diesel from those special CUBES .. the cubes are designed to feed the generators and are almost impossible to break into.. They hold 990 liters of fuel ( because to transport 1000 liters or more requires a special .licence ).

SO... They conect the generators to the transformers before switching the line out. The customers electric is off for a few minutes while it's connected.
The generators are connected to the customers side of the fuse,s therefore it can't back feed out to us on the line...
but after the line is switched out we protect ourselves from the generators with " earths / or drains "

hope this explains our technique of doing away with the necessity for "WORKING HOT ".
Its illegal in the UK TO WORK HOT IF THERES AN ALTERNATIVE.

pictures might help my inadequate explanation ...
We were changing out rotten transformer.... Poles today As part of refurbishing the line.
There are 18 generators on this shut down. About 40 customers are fed by them . ( they will be on generation for about 2 weeks. ).

[reppy007]

Bring the Cubes to the U.S.and lets see how long it takes for them to be broken -into.....Name a circumstance where it would be necessary to work a line hot there...I imagine it would have to be a good one.:D

[Pootnaigle]

Umm a lawyer would have a field day with the way you hook em up.... No protection tween the generator and the customer wouldnt ever fly here

[Old Line Dog]

That is pretty Slick Bren.

Sure wouldn't fly here. Way to much logistics and Way to much money. "Cheap" is the power companys motto's here.....

[bren guzzi]

Umm a lawyer would have a field day with the way you hook em up.... No protection tween the generator and the customer wouldnt ever fly here

Shud have explained it better.

The customers have as much protection when on generation.

The generators have built in " trip switches" and every customer in the the uk has " by law " a fuse between the supply coming into their property and their meter.

And O.L.D. It's only this way over here because ... As I've stated many times before.
The health and safety at work LAWS... State that you cannot do things that could cause injury or worse to an employee.
If they don't do it the safest way practically possible...
then. They can be sued for COOPERATE MANSLAUGHTER...

PEOPLE BEFORE PROFIT, " it's the law. ".

[neil macgregor]

Bring the Cubes to the U.S.and lets see how long it takes for them to be broken -into.....Name a circumstance where it would be necessary to work a line hot there...I imagine it would have to be a good one.:D

ive put genny,s up in Glasgow and they haven't been broken into so not much chance of yous yanks breaking into them

[neil macgregor]

Umm a lawyer would have a field day with the way you hook em up.... No protection tween the generator and the customer wouldnt ever fly here

the fuses on the meter board would kick in dafty

[stulittle]

Can one of you guys across the pond explain to us over here in the "we work it dead Isle" what protection you have between the LV main and the customer's "panel" ??

In the UK we have fusing before the meter in every domestic installation and many small commercial ones and newer overhead installs also have fusing before the service cable as it leaves the main.

Stu

[bren guzzi]

Can one of you guys across the pond explain to us over here in the "we work it dead Isle" what protection you have between the LV main and the customer's "panel" ??

In the UK we have fusing before the meter in every domestic installation and many small commercial ones and newer overhead installs also have fusing before the service cable as it leaves the main.

Stu


Went up to do my live lv exam/ test today at Hoylake.
Its been over 20 years since I've worked lv live .. ( on lv ) " worked 400,000 live outta helicopter" ;)

because I hadn't done the two courses my company expected me to try and blag my way through it. ( it costs £400 to do the test...4,000 to do the course).
So I drove up to Liverpool.. Had a coffee. THEN TOLD THE INSTRUCTOR I WASNT DOING THE TEST ... coz I hasn't done the courses. He wasn't bothered

A FEW THINGS HAVE HAPPENED LATLEY THAT HAVE BEEN A BIT " SUSPECT SAFTEY WISE "
since we've found out that we aren't renewing the contract a lot of the guys have lost focus. ( there's an accident waiting to happen)

sorry for for hijacking your question Stu. Just ranting..

[stulittle]

Not a prob at all Bren,

I wouldn't be putting myself in the firing line either.

There are times to blag it (generally when your own ar$e is on the line) and times to play the game.

When it comes to safety then I'm all for playing the game. All of my guys went through confined spaces training last year despite the fact only two of us where planned to do the job that needed it. That way it minimises the risk of someone getting hurt, we only have to look at our safety records against other countries to know we do it the right way.

I'm sure things will work out for you soon.

Stu

[Rob]

Just so we are on the same page, When you say LV Main, Do you mean Low Voltage? If so, then there is no protection between the Breaker (or fuse if it's not a CSP Pot)on the transformer and the customer's main. We don't install fuses at the weatherhead or where the service drop ties into the secondary pattern.

[bren guzzi]

Just so we are on the same page, When you say LV Main, Do you mean Low Voltage? If so, then there is no protection between the Breaker (or fuse if it's not a CSP Pot)on the transformer and the customer's main. We don't install fuses at the weatherhead or where the service drop ties into the secondary pattern.

Yeah LV is low voltage .. We run at 240 volts in the UK. There's always " at least 2 fuses " between the consumer and the overhead line. In fact the majority have three .
The one below the transformer
the main fuse in ( or just out side) the house..
then there's normally a trip board the other side of the consumers main fuse.

[T-Man]

Yeah LV is low voltage .. We run at 240 volts in the UK. There's always " at least 2 fuses " between the consumer and the overhead line. In fact the majority have three .
The one below the transformer
the main fuse in ( or just out side) the house..
then there's normally a trip board the other side of the consumers main fuse.

Sounds like a lot of good places for light flickers to crop up.

[bren guzzi]

Sounds like a lot of good places for light flickers to crop up.

Never suffer it here.

We wire brush our connectors. :D

[stulittle]

That explains quite a bit.

To add to Bren's last post. UK regulations now require pretty much anything on a domestic dwelling to be protected by an RCD (GFI ??) inside the dwelling.

So we quite often have all the fusing Bren has mentioned plus 30mA trip current RCD's after the customer's main switch,

Stu

[T-Man]

Never suffer it here.

We wire brush our connectors. :D

The connections you make usually are ok, it's the connections internal to the breakers and disconnects that turn crumby in weather.

[Rob]

... Anything past the Meter. So if a customer decides to install any type of protection (Surge or GFCI) other than their Main Breaker they would hire an inside electrician to do that work.

While we are on this subject, I've heard Bren and Clive and few others oversea's talk about doing all their work dead. I'm not going to get into the debate of what is safer or better but over here in the US many utilities across the country are ranked on the number of total interruptions a customer experiences. And there are different categories for the type of interruption it is.
What I mean by that is it's not just an outage that is caused by a storm or a hit pole but also what they call an "Intentional". And those are timed. Anything under 5 minutes ( I believe that's still the number here) doesn't count towards the metric. There are fines associated with not meeting the standard metrics.
I'm sure there are others that can provide more information than me but you get the drift of it. So, even providing a generator to a customer would involve an outage.

[bren guzzi]

... Anything past the Meter. So if a customer decides to install any type of protection (Surge or GFCI) other than their Main Breaker they would hire an inside electrician to do that work.

While we are on this subject, I've heard Bren and Clive and few others oversea's talk about doing all their work dead. I'm not going to get into the debate of what is safer or better but over here in the US many utilities across the country are ranked on the number of total interruptions a customer experiences. And there are different categories for the type of interruption it is.
What I mean by that is it's not just an outage that is caused by a storm or a hit pole but also what they call an "Intentional". And those are timed. Anything under 5 minutes ( I believe that's still the number here) doesn't count towards the metric. There are fines associated with not meeting the standard metrics.
I'm sure there are others that can provide more information than me but you get the drift of it. So, even providing a generator to a customer would involve an outage.

We get them changed over in under 5 minutes..generator running leads ready to go on.. Pull the fuse...conect leads to consumers side of the fuse unit. Switch generator over to supply.
BINGO.
no body inconvienenced .. Warned that it will happen at least 7 days in advance.. Only issue we occasionally have is setting of a few " ALARMS "
We can work on the network dead.. SIMPLE. :)

" it's the future for you guys if you want it bad enough".

[Rob]

You could be right Bren... But not in my lifetime !

[reppy007]

You could be right Bren... But not in my lifetime !

I agree.Thanks for explaining dead work Bren...I fully understand now!....Learned that dead work needs a tailboard too.....yes I understand it all...........NOT! :D

[lewy]

So how does this work in a more densely populated area or in the city or when dealing with businesses?

[stulittle]

If it needs to go off, then it does.

Most larger areas have link boxes on the LV to allow some loads to be supported by other substations. Bear in mind that in a city or industrial/business area the HV is almost certainly in a ring so the affected section should be able to be switched out with no loss of supply.

When the UK built it's networks, someone thought about maintaining them so it's always been designed that way.

I sit a bit on both sides of the meter as a lot of my companies business is on the consumer's side including overhead lines and underground distribution but equally I spend a lot of my time with the guys from the local network operator and various contractors sorting installs of new substations and HV network.

Stu

[reppy007]

So how does this work in a more densely populated area or in the city or when dealing with businesses?

Good question lewy,sometimes I think it takes more work , to work it dead then work it hot.The work is the same except you have the hot equipment/wire......Saying all of that when we work alot dead,it means its dead because of a storm/weather....so yea,in that case there is more work,sometimes for days or weeks.....or longer.:nightmare:....It would be wierd talking about working everything dead for me....I mean what would I say?...less danger...more boring.....less filling :D

[bren guzzi]

Good question lewy,sometimes I think it takes more work , to work it dead then work it hot.The work is the same except you have the hot equipment/wire......Saying all of that when we work alot dead,it means its dead because of a storm/weather....so yea,in that case there is more work,sometimes for days or weeks.....or longer.:nightmare:....It would be wierd talking about working everything dead for me....I mean what would I say?...less danger...more boring.....less filling :D

In the more densely populated area the system is designed to be back fed ...the easiest way to describe it ...
is think of our system as a figure of 8.. You can take any part of the system out and always be able to feed from the other side..
we don't only have L.V. Generators ... There is also H.V. generators.. Up to 11,000 volts. So there is always a way to isolate sections of the line without disrupting customers.

[stulittle]

Good question lewy,sometimes I think it takes more work , to work it dead then work it hot.The work is the same except you have the hot equipment/wire......Saying all of that when we work alot dead,it means its dead because of a storm/weather....so yea,in that case there is more work,sometimes for days or weeks.....or longer.:nightmare:....It would be wierd talking about working everything dead for me....I mean what would I say?...less danger...more boring.....less filling :D

A lot more chance of going home alive and as Bren's already said it's illegal to work it hot over here unless there are special circumstances and saving time isn't one of them.

[bren guzzi]

A lot more chance of going home alive and as Bren's already said it's illegal to work it hot over here unless there are special circumstances and saving time isn't one of them.

Saving time I AGREE or more importantly. MONEY.