Cutout Failures

[PA BEN]

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.:rolleyes:

[BigClive]

That used to be a very hot thread on this forum. I'm not going to mention the bad products name, but lets see if it still holds the honours.

The primary issue was disintegration of the cutout causing the live metalwork to drop on and injure or kill the lineman.

[sparky0293]

This is a continuing problem until all defective AB Chance cutouts as removed from service. To date I have not seen a failed S&C. The problem is with the cement. The cement causes the fractures in the porcelain ultimately creating leakage current, tracking, and a host of problems. Mainly for us linemen and the public in general. The companies should get together and go after AB Chance. I guess we have to wait until one of is Killed or someone in the general public.

[mainline]

I don't know if it was an A.B. chance cutout or not, but one night during our big storm in march me and my coworker worked all day on a line. We were soaked and exhausted. We finally finished everything, to end our shift we went back to the mainline cutout. I removed our grounds put on the high side tap with a shotgun, and then plugged in the fuse with an 8' extendo. The cutout broke in half and left me holding the fuse holder with high side balanced on top. Fortunately I still had the shotgun so I could take the hot lien clamp of one handed. I almost soiled my pants. No backup cutout and the end of the shift so all those people had to wait until morning to get power. I would definitely recommend a thorough visual inspection for any old porcelain cutout. I know a bunch of other people who have had them break. Scary.

[maddog369]

These cutouts should be inspected very carefully before working on or near them. As far as cold weather being a factor in failure, they have even failed in Hawaii. Although they do seem to fail alot more in colder areas. Aside from pole fires and the fact that they just fall open sometimes, we have one guy that lost both hands due to these cutouts failing, as well as a couple close calls with guys lucky enough to escape with minor burns.

[grillman]

AB Chance cutouts have cost me a lot of sleep, cracking down the middle tracking across the T-bracket we mount them on and causing pole fires. But on the flip side they have made me a lot of money. We have learned to go up in the air and inspect them before you attempt to open them whenever possible.

[Pootnaigle]

I have a question regarding Kearney cutouts.I noticed over the years that they were really bad about burning up the door when used on transformers. Typcally the fuse would melt but door remained closed and would track over until the fuse barrell burnt upThe same cutouts used as a linefuse rarely did this. I dont know if they would only carry a small enough amount of current to power a transformer but not a line? Any explanations?
I sure liked hangin em with a stick just dont get no easier but they didnt hold up for crap

[Dorchester]

During a recent storm, we had bird dogs doing circuit patrols. One guy found a cut-out that had apparently burnt through an arm, but was still in and running. It was a 13.8kv riser pole.
We switched around and when we went to repair, we saw that the cutout had a barely perceptible crack down the entire length, from top to bottom. Apparently there was some water ingress and through typical heat cycling, it cracked all the way down, energizing the bracket. Nice pickup by the bird dog. The vintage was mid nineties. We have found through a replacement program and testing that this was the timeframe when the predominent manufacturer of pocelain cutouts was shutting down there production, laying people off, make your own conclusions. I don't believe ABB made their own porcelain. I imagine they were getting it from the other manufacturer.

[compression]

Foreman got a wild hair this morning and decided we needed to go across town and change a pole out that has been on our list for a while. I asked him why now? We're in the middle of a conversion. He says I don't know, He just had a feeling driving out to the job that we needed to do it now. Says that he's learned over the years, if you get a feeling like that you better do it/ go with it. So we loaded up a pole and went that way.

We get setup and start a tailgate and first thing I see when I look up is one of the cutouts busted in halve, the top halve has slid about 1 inch to the side and the only thing holding it together is the door.

We all got a chuckle out of his premonition... bet you can't guess the brand?

http://www.dmaxhp.com/co1.jpg

here's a close up of the top halve, if they would've domed the top these of boogers they probably wouldn't have so many problems...

http://www.dmaxhp.com/co2.jpg

[lineleader]

this has been happening in our area for about 4 years now. we had to push our company,Ohio Edison[First Energy], to buy the polymer type cutouts to replace the ones made in mexico.we are replacing them at a wholesale rate now and they are constantly causing damage and outages in our system.not many problems with the 27kv variety,but the 15kv ones are mainly the culprits.visual inspection is a must when we come upon a pole with porcelain cutouts on it. iv'e spent weeks so far replacing these imported pieces of garbage. good luck and be careful; i only hope you dont have as many as we did.

[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.:rolleyes:

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.

[returntotheeve]

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.

Your engineer said just bend it up? Thats amazing. Usually some crusty lineman would say that not a precise calculating engineer. I mentioned modifying my slackies and my super 5hit himself.

[ghostdog]

We have had bad cutouts of both AB and S&C. We are trying to keep track of the years that they were made to see if it was a problem with the batch. So far it is between 1985 and 1995. Unless they used the same batch for 10 years I think there is a bigger problem. The utility I work for now does not want to switch to poly cutouts for some reason. The utility I used to work for decided to change every cutout to poly. To date they have not had any problems with the polys. They are still changeing out the old cutouts. This is there 6th year of replaceing cutouts.

[polerunner]

A Telus lineman (phone) had a close call this week. Before climbing a pole he noticed tracking between the BC Hydro cutout,down the pole to the telephone line. He checked the pole with his hotpole checker ?? It showed OK so up the pole he goes. After driving a J hook into the pole, the cutout falls apart, and the high side riser shorts to a guy wire. No injuries, other than his dirty shorts. These things are made of porcelin boys, just the same as you toilet bowl. Have a look and be safe. Most of our cutouts are Chance, so beware. Leave them in the box until hanging time. I get upset when I see them hanging, or piled up on the trucks. :D

[PA BEN]

At my last Utility we would from time to time drive around the system and look at cutouts with binoculars. (It was a small system) a town of 2400 people. The first time we went out we found some tracking on several poles. When we would go up for a closer look you could see the cracks in the porcelain. On the ones we found I noticed the epoxy would be dark even black on the back side for the mount. I would look for this change in the epoxy color from the ground. It worked for us, you would see a color change and sure enough it was a bad cutout.

[LeadHead]

Whenever we have one or two days of steady rain in the northeast, Ill usually have one or two pole fires caused by a cracked switch.So you know when you pull up extra caution needs to be taken.Company has no intention of changing out bad porcelain too eXpensive we just change them when they fail.

[johnbellamy]

I know it is difficult for a one man troubleman, But I have worked at places were this is a bad problem, the second man in the air can secure the hot tap jumper with a shotgun, so when opening with a loadbust tool or not, if the cutout fails and breaks, you wont have a hot jumper swinging at you, back at the grounded can, or swing over to another phase on a switch pole.