trouble shooting standard

[linemansmilestones]

I approached Byron to have a t-man forum, and it is great to hear from all you t-men on a number of problems and solutions.

Now I want to work on a project of producing a trouble shooting standard that will be a compliment to our collective experience, and a compliment to this web site.

As a t man we cover transmission, distribution, commercial, residential, agriculture, and more. I have my way of trouble shooting, and you all have your ways which may not match mine. The reality is that we are working with the same natural energy, no matter where we live or work.

I will be posting situations, and the way I would trouble shoot it. I invite other t men to analyze and trouble shoot the situation too, using your experience.

The purpose of the forum is to put your foot print (in writing) on the industry. Many t-men will be leaving the industry (I have left) in the next few years, and their valuable education of trouble shooting will be leaving also. This is not good for future trouble man, since most t man info comes from people who have been the the craft.

So think about what I am proposing and send me your thoughts.

[wtdoor67]

I have worked for companies who did not have the title of troubleman in their classifications. It's all done by servicemen titles in some companies.

I have never known a Journeyman who was not pretty comfortable doing trouble work after a very short while. Just the basic understanding of how a distribution system works is usually all the training most people need.

The most useful thing to learn I found was just knowing where all the subs. were and where the circuits ran. I was never a bonafide serviceman/troubleman, but did work for about 7 or 8 years where you were assigned to trouble ever 4th weekend.

In my experience there is only about 10% of trouble work that requires some real brain work.

[cliff]

:cool: I tend to disagree with that 10% figure but I guess it depends on how the system is built. If the dispatchers or load specialist can do their job too. I see many Lineman can make a smooth transition in to that service truck and some just get bored working by themselves.

[linemansmilestones]

perhaps in rural setting t-men's responsibilities are less than in a city with a large population and a lot of commercial and industrial users. underground is a big issue and some sub stations are underground like in San Francisco.
PG&E has a t-man school, but not all t-man attend, and the school is mostly about substations, which are usually on SCADA.

Even in a rural area t-men are the first responders, and carry the responsibility of the company. It usually takes a lot of seniority to become a t-man, but line work does not really prepare you for the level of customer service and contact with the public that t-men face.

Linework did not teach me about how to trouble shoot high low voltage, high bill complaints, part outs in customers panel, intermittent voltage complaints, non pay shut offs, industrial quality voltage controls, circuit outage restoration using the computer as a main tool, outages caused by momentary transmission interruption to the sub station, communication with the system operator (who is being guided by the computer circuit program and customer outage info from the call center) and more.

T-man is the first responder and has to consider his safety, as the first factor, when responding to an outage or emergency. Next he or she has to evaluate the situation and communicate with the switching center, even if it is only a one customer problem.

A t-man's responsibility is not the same in all regions of the country or the world, but we are there to keep the lights on, and a lot of our work is common practice. This is the info I want us to pass on to new t-man. On a crew you have support, and a call out, you are on your own.

[wtdoor67]

Linework did not teach me about how to trouble shoot high low voltage, high bill complaints, part outs in customers panel, intermittent voltage complaints, non pay shut offs, industrial quality voltage controls, circuit outage restoration using the computer as a main tool, outages caused by momentary transmission interruption to the sub station, communication with the system operator (who is being guided by the computer circuit program and customer outage info from the call center) and more. Preceding is quote from linemansmilestones.
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No computers when I did trouble. Most of mine was in an area that had 2400 delta, 2400/4160 wye, 4160 uniground, 7200 grounded delta, 12470 wye, 12470 uniground and 34.5 wye. I believe it took 5 different primary transformers for this system. High bill complaints I believe were given to the meter man. He usually tested the meter etc. I guess. Linework gave me an understanding of capicators, and regulators, LTC's etc. for high voltage or low voltage complaints. Non pay shutoffs were standard. Customer got a letter, then a door knocker was hung, then he was disconnected. Dispatch always knew if a transmission breaker was locked out or had operated. The dispatcher just informed us via phone or radio what the specific problem was.

10% was just a ballpark estimate. In thinking back I believe overhead Kyles caused most of the puzzles. I found Kyles that would hold part of the load but not all of it. Some would feed partially. Open jumpers were just a matter of checking different pots or banks to figure where you had total voltage. Checking all the bus voltage in the sub sometimes gave a clue.

We set RVMeters sometimes. We never went past the meter point, if the voltage was good at the meter point the customer was advised to get an electrician. I usually made an exception on single phase residential although we weren't supposed to.

There's plenty of exceptions I'm sure and in more sophfisticated systems it would be more complicated but understanding how a system worked was my biggest help.

Having all pots etc. on bails and hotclamps made it simple to just climb a pole and move a pot over to another phase to check for voltage. I never got bored on trouble but did on service work. Liked being alone.

[copperlineman]

Let's get at it. Post some situations when your ready.

I love t-work. Did it for many years in a dense metropolitan area of the midwest. My area was made up of 6 townships, and parts of 3 more (township is 36 square miles around here) and had over 200,000 customers. URD, overhead, 4kv, 12kv, 34kv and more. The company has many more areas just like it.

When I was there, we worked very close with the dispatcher, but they don't anymore. Dispatchers don't know much now. It's not their fault, that's the direction the company went.

We were the first responders to all calls. We also did most of the switching for construction crews, because we could get around easier with our smaller trucks and we knew the system much better. One could be a great construction lineman, but once he came into t-shooting, he almost had to start from scratch. It's a much different world operating and troubleshooting a system than it is to build it. No specs in troubleshooting.

[doug]

I Think This Is A Good Idea To Have This Type Of Page.i Myself Was A T-man/
Serviceman For About 10 Yrs.we Worked A 1 Man Truck Unless You Need Help Chg Out A Pot Or Picking Up Wire.line Work Did Prepare You For The T-calls Of Picking Wire ,chg Out Pot,etc.i Worked For A Lg. Coop Where Line Crew And T-man/serv. Pulled Call Outs.but I Learned Most Of My T-shooting From Older
Serv.men And Working Thru Problems By Yourself.i Was Very Lucky To Attend T-shooting School In Hse And At Schools.also A Good Scada-dispatch Dept Is Also A Big Plus!!!!!with The Use Of Amr Metering,scada,etc.iseen That A Lot Of Trbl.calls Were Cause By Improper Training And Short Cut Taken By Crews And Contractors.this Sure Makes You Do Thing Right The First Time Around And I Would Try To Pass These Thing On To Others.a Lot Of Line Work Is Learned By Working With Other And Doing It The Same As They Do And Every Crew Has There Way Of Doing Things.i Tried To Take The Best Of All And Then Do It My Way.
Also There Is A Lot Of Different Tools To Help You Trbl Shoot Such As Beast Of Burden,fault Ind. Amp Meters, Voltage Detectors That Can Make Life A Lot Easier.but This All Has To Come From The Company Buying These Tools.a Lot Of It Is Work And Using The Tools That You Have To The Max!!!!!!
One Thing When You Work By Your Self Safety Is 1st Because You Have Noone To Watch Your Back Unlike On A Crew Were You Watch Each Other.
In My View T-man/servman Is One Of The Best Job At A Electric Company.

[wtdoor67]

A guy told me of this once. He went to a no power at a transformer bank. Things appeared normal with the exception of a pot fuse blown. He replaced the fuse, checked voltage, lingered a moment and left. In about 45 minutes he was called back to the same location. Again, a fuse blown and no indication of what blew it. He determined the pots were adequately sized for the load, fused properly and so he again fused the pot, checked voltage and waited awhile, nothing happened and he left to be called back again after the same period of time.

The only thing he noted was some of the customers were served by an open wire secondary with 2 hot phases on top with the neutral on the bottom. He figured it out this time. What was the problem?

[thrasher]

You didn't say the loads and wire sizes but from the timing I'd guess the secondary was heating up from load and sagging into the neutral.

[loodvig]

You didn't say the loads and wire sizes but from the timing I'd guess the secondary was heating up from load and sagging into the neutral.

That's what I thought of too! I've seen 23kv highlines sag too from the summer load.

[Bull Dog]

I have had many like this. The funnyist one was a cow rubbing the down guy cause she had an itch. Took a long time to figure that one out beacuse the cow always went away when the fuse blew! She did say MOO a lot. No her name was not Tracey. Just kidding there mam.

[Pootnaigle]

I had the same exact prollem with a horse rubbing on the dn guy,took 3 nights striaght to realize he was the culprit. But I had had a ton of callouts for nothing more than a tripped breaker in the customers panel. It may be damn easy but it sure is frustrating when ya aint had more than 2 hrs sleep inna row fera week.
I spoze the thing that made the biggest impression on me was that all poles to the public were "Telephone Poles" But any damn wire that came off of one was a live power line., I had reports of a downed cable tv or telephone wire arcing on the ground numerous times, I spoze people kinda garnished their claims to get a faster response.
Ive had callouts for a meter spinning like mad and the customer will swear not one thing is on yet they fail to remember they just took a shower and are the proud owners of an electric hot water heater. Ive had em make me laff and Ive had em make me cuss. Just imagine how many of these callouts could be prevented with a knowledgeble person answerin the Phone.Unfortunately Todays utilitys are pennywise and dollar dumb , Pay the phone guy10 bux an hour to answer and the Svc man 45 or better to check it out,,,, couple that with the fact the phone guy usually has 20 of em out on the same kinda BS and tell me who loses.

[wtdoor67]

Yep, hot legs sagging into the neutral under load. You da man Thrasher.


Used to get those cow rubbing guys also. I've seen some people wrap them in barb wire or put those guy guards with the stickers on the guards to discourage the rubbing. We used to build guards around the guys. Just some fence posts to keep the cows off them.

Here's another for you smarties. The primary was 7200 volts, grounded delta 3 phase. Upstream from the problem bank was a set of regulators, and a capicator bank or two. The problem bank was a 277/480 bank. It served an irrigation bank. Periodically the breakers would trip on the panel of the irrigation bank. After 3 or 4 calls from the customer, he related that after resetting the breakers numerous times it would again trip. The co. troubleman went and diagnosed a bad pot. When the crew arrived I climbed the pole to change the "bad" pot. I examined the pots and remarked I didn't think a bad pot was the problem and also noticed all pole ground connections were "baked." We changed the pot and the problem persisted. It was the power companies' problem. What's your guess?

[Phoenix-7]

My guess would be a poor connection to system neutral.

[wtdoor67]

There is no system neutral. It was a grounded delta primary system.

[loodvig]

Without being there this is a hard one. A quick guess is one leg is out or something is wrong with one leg. I'd have to be there with my volt meter and amp meter. Take readings, then remove the customer's load, and take readings again. Find nothing there go further back towards the source.

[wtdoor67]

It's been a long time but there was nothing amiss at the bank itself.

[johnbellamy]

Was the circuit loaded? Was it a 3 or 4 wire service? You state the where 2 cap banks on the load side of the Regs, what size where they? Was the voltage regulated at the sub? Was the 3 phase load balanced or imbalanced?

There are alot of variables there, but if you said the bank was fine, all connections where good, the breaker for that pump kept trippin, you don't give us what size bank, or what horse pump?

I would have to guess with two sets of caps, and a set of regs, that you where at the end of some line with this pump, and you have voltage problems, I would have to guess that the regs wern't able to step up quick enough to handle the demand of that pump, so with the voltage drop the breaker would trip, I would suggest if that is the problem, you adjust your bandwith on your regs, and run your voltages a little hotter, if that aint it I suggest you punt.

And as far as barb wire on those down guys, it just encourages those bull, I have come across 3 dead myself.

[wtdoor67]

Don't read to much into this. It was actually fairly simple. It was 277/480, so that would normally make it a 4 wire service. The pots were ample size for the load. There was nothing wrong at the location.

I can't remember the voltage readings it has been so long ago. The only other hint I can remember is that I climbed a pole about 6 or 8 spans away and moved a single phase pot over to the other ungrounded phase. The readings on the pot were so far apart that I told the foreman and groundman that the problem was from that point to the sub. That proved to be true.

What's your record on killing animals? We got about 20 bovines once on one location. A phase was low to the ground in a feed lot and they just kept coming up and sniffing that phase. Sickening.

On deer I believe the most at one location was 4. Different wild species. Lets see. Hawks, Owls, Bald Eagles, Golden Eagles, Pelican, Skunk, Raccoon, Squirrels, Whitetail Deer, Mule Deer and that's about all I recall. Never did see a buzzard, can't remember a crow offhand, no bob cats, no foxes, no opossums, no coyotes. I remember once we were looking at this dead bald eagle and this other hand came up and jerked a bunch of feathers from the dead bird. We said. Man you don't want to be caught with those.

[johnbellamy]

They are curious arn't they, this was on a three phase tap that wasnt fused, the one rubbed the guy and broke the phase it was hanging in the clear, it walked into phase operated the breaker, then the other 2 did the same.

Alot of wildlife, all the fowl you can imagine, 1 bobcat, a climber, been dead for along time, got maggots and dead cat all over me. Oh well.

[loodvig]

A stuck regulator?

[wtdoor67]

They are curious arn't they, this was on a three phase tap that wasnt fused, the one rubbed the guy and broke the phase it was hanging in the clear, it walked into phase operated the breaker, then the other 2 did the same.

Alot of wildlife, all the fowl you can imagine, 1 bobcat, a climber, been dead for along time, got maggots and dead cat all over me. Oh well.



I've never seen any ducks, geese though. I don't guess they mess around power lines. Had a guy tell me once that his friend went on a no power at an oil field location. A bobcat had climbed the pole to retrieve a dead bird or something and gotten killed. Bobcats were bringing a premium price so the guy got paid for the callout and skinned the cat and got about 150 dollars also for the cat.

[wtdoor67]

A stuck regulator?


No man, nothing exotic. Just a fuse out on a Cap. bank. Simple eh? I was sent on something else and my esteemed foreman took about 4 hours or so to figure it out. What a hand.


Here's another good one. A blink would happen on a circuit ever day usually about the same time. No targets at the sub, the dispatcher reported no operations on the transmission line. After extensive patroling it was narrowed down to a small section of the 3 phase feeder. The blink was on a single phase portion however. This was a little more subtle, but fairly simple. No cattle rubbing, no fuses blown, no Kyle operating, nothing of that nature. It was pretty rare however.

It's time for you guys to take a turn, I've about run out of stories.

[johnbellamy]

But geese yes, heron,owls,hawks,starlings,crows, pheasant,osprey, but no chicken hawks,:cool: or chickens. Had to be taken by boat once out into the middle of the columbia river at Rocky Reach dam, had to climb the towers covered in bird shit, and knock off all the nests and remove the pvc bird guard from the bridge. They had a professional bird sniper go with us, and he did his thing, pretty good shot. I guess those birds were not on the endangered list. I have to say that I have made the most money off of squirels though.

As far as the blink, if it was on a single phase line, if it was on 4 or 8 foot arms, where you staple you pole ground to arm and tie it down to your neut, maybe a cracked glass, if it was in the mornin where it could build up enough moisture to track, then dry itself back out do to the operation? Could have been a dry branch layin across both, same about the moisture, or a dead snag layin over the phase causing the same thing. maybe a bad or cracked cut out on a steel arm thats bonded? Maybe a floater? Let us know.

[wtdoor67]

Never did have a snake, although a guy told me he found one killed in a pad mount and it startled him when he opened the lid as it was kinda frozen in an upright position. Just a black snake. I did find a live rattler in a pd mt once. I brought my foreman over, as it was night and he was deathly afraid of snakes. He like to have had a run a way. We had them knock out circuits on subs a few times by crawling up the buss work after birds but I never did see them.


Naw John the blink thing was caused by a bad spot in a regulator. Remember there were no fuses blown, no kyles operating and no sub breakers operating. It was just like someone was opening a switch. The clue was that it always happened at almost the same time each day. It was thought that demand and load being consistent that when the reg. went past that certain spot it would cause the blink. The reg. was changed out and that ended the problem. It was a very rare thing though and I've always remembered it.

When I first got into this work I remember once someone was going to put a pin and insulator underneath an arm in an up side down configuration. The old lineman I was with said. Don't do that guys, water will run into it and freeze, busting the insulator and causing an outage. I always remembered it. Years later we were driving down the road and I saw such an application. I asked the guy I was with. Who did that? He named the foreman. I said, hell that will freeze, bust and cause an outage. A few weeks later it did. I thought that was funny.

Come on guys. Put out some hard to figure problems and we'll guess at them.

[johnbellamy]

One that caused us a big outage at a sub, The way it looked when I got there was pretty bad, looked like that snake was goin after some birds nest that was built in a pvc bushing cover on a breaker, blew the shit out of the ocr, and took out two high side station transformer fuses, melted plactic every where, broken glass everywhere.

As far as your sinereo's, ya got to give a little more detail, so I can disect them a little better.

As far as the know fuses blowin or kyle's operating, when you say blinking lights, thats different than dimming lights, sometimes on old field OCR's they might have counters but they might not work, and alot of taps aren't fused just depends on what kind of system your workin on. People see dimming or regs step in up and down all the time.

[wtdoor67]

Yeah John it's hard to describe something in such a way sometimes, that the problem is clear and yet you don't give away the exact cause. That's a little of the fun with these things. Sometimes people hit it right on the head though.


Here's one related to me by another hand. The problem was at a 208 bank. He went there, removed all secondary and found one pot that was obviously bad and wouldn't hold a fuse of course. The other 2 pots checked out okay.

A new pot was brought out, properly paralled etc. and hung. Again the fuse blew. The pots were separated and all showed proper phase to ground voltage and held a fuse properly. I don't think phase to phase voltage was checked as it should have been.

The problem was that the previous knuckleheads who installed the bank had taken the winding ends when they paralleled and criss crossed them in a very unnatural manner. A & C had been put on the right hand side and B & C ends had been put on the left hand side.


They then wired the new pot in this manner and it worked. I didn't have the heart to tell him all he would have had to have done on the new pot was to swap positions with the ground and hot leg. Anyway his method worked and it just proves you can run into some dumb things sometimes.

On lights out, I can recall going on no lights and the folks lights would be on. I would ask them. Have your lights been off? They would reply. Oh yeah, they would say. I would say. They seem to be okay now. They would say. Well they were off just about 2 or 3 seconds. It was a breaker operation of course.

This guy I worked with answered a no lights about 2 AM one time. The lights were on at the address and he knocked the door. When the resident opened the door he said. I thought your lights were off? The guy replied. Yeah, that light right across there. (a st. lite). The serviceman/troubleman said. Well we don't usually repair those on OT.

[flashman]

It's been a while since I've posted but I felt the need to comment on this thread. It's a good deal to start the thread and will help alot of guys that run across different problems in the field. The more you work trouble calls the more you learn and the problems the everyday lineman don't encounter. Experience is the key to a good troubleman and solving those problems comes from knowledge. Keep up the good work. flashman

[Pootnaigle]

I have only seen this once and I aint sactley sure why it happened the way it did without causing a fuse to blow so here goes.
I received a partial lites out call to several houses. They all shared a common Transformer in an alley. Using a meter I checked and sho nuff 1 leg was dead aza hammer. I found #2 solid cu hot welded to the # 2 solid Neutral on the open wire secondary.I seperated em with a stick and lo n behold everbody wuz happy once again. I checked and the Xfmr was fused correctly. Idda thunk that copper shudda been glowing but it wernt, Idda also thunk it wudda burnt down but it dint, Idda further thunk damages would have occured to the customers stuff but it dint, I left there feeling like I dint know a damn thing.

[King]

I got a trouble call one day a HVAC serviceman was getting 30volts off one of his heating units. I got to the site and checked voltage about 4 townhouses away 60 yards and I was getting 30 volts dirt to groundrod. I am in underground subdivision by a pool the transformers are dead front and live front. The secondary cable is URD cable and the primary is 1/0 cable with the concentric neutral on the outerjacket. What do you think I found was the problem?

[wtdoor67]

Probably that damn concentric neutral rotted into.

[rcdallas]

I'll vote for the rotted away neutral. If you stuck your hand in the pool did it give you a tingly feeling?

[King]

We figured it out by running a piece of 3#10 streetlight wire from one transformer to the other when we bonded the neutrals at the transformers together the stray voltage ceased. The first attempt did not work because we tried it on a span closest to the building but it happened to be one span away from that about 350' away. To make repairs we had a boring crew come in and shoot new cable. I like new cable but my wallet don't.

[billygoat]

this is the only problem i could not diagnose in my long, long career. when i was still in tech school i was roughing in some recepticals. i had a 120v 20A receptical fed by j-box which was fed directly from the panel. there were several other recepticals fed by the j-box and they all worked but the one right below the j-box had no juice.

this has bothered me for a while because i have never figured it out and the j-box was literally ten feet above the receptical. i dont know if it maters but it was all 12 awg thhn in 3/4 emt.

all splices were redone and checked then checked again. the receptical was replaced and replaced again.

i eventually fixed the problem by moving the pipe that came down from the j-box 2 ft to the left.

i know your not electricians but i figure all you are smarter than me. my instructor at tech school was a 30 year master electrical inspector and he couldn't figure it out either.

everything that could have been checked or tested was done so twice

[Koga]

you tried every check twice . Did ya try meggin the wire itself, before you moved the box ?

Koga

[wtdoor67]

Your voltmeter was temporarily on the fritz. Insulation not skinned off good. Wire broken. Some sort of substance temporarily insulating the terminals.

No Linemen are not smarter than narrowbacks. They just think they are.

[T-Man]

Here is a good trouble call: A lady living in a condo calls and says sometimes when she takes a shower she gets shocks. A young new Troubleshooter is dispatched to the call and even though we generally do not do inside work and once you prove the power entering the building is good we would turn it over to a contractor to do inside inspections. But this fella was a new TS and he wanted to find out what was going on. The lady explained that sometimes she got shocks from the shower. The reading from the Shower head to the drain was 0 volts! The TS asked if it happened all the time she said not always but she was getting nervous about using the shower. This guy was baffled but he asked the right questions, when did this start? She said about a month ago. It’s been getting worse lately. Did you get any work done here then? No. The TS asked when was the last time it happened? She said yesterday . . .I was doing Laundry and once I got that all going I went to take a shower because I needed to run some errands. The TS said Laundry? She said yes but it can’t be that we just had new machines installed. Let’s take a look at that he said. The new washer and dryer were in a little laundry room carpeted standing on leveling feet that were nylon on the bottom. What happened was the delivery men hooked up the washer and Dryer and they transferred the cord from the old dryer to the new one ( That is not included now a days ) well they didn’t wire it right and the case was hot and the works neutral. Standing on nylon feet and carpet the lady didn’t get a shock from the dryer this way ( not yet! ) The dryer vent was an aluminum 4” hose that ran up into the ceiling and draped over the hot water pipe up there. When the dryer was on the hot moist air deposited lint into the vent hose, when enough damp lint made the connection the current transferred to the hot water pipe and there was a current flow from the shower head to the drain. . .only when the dryer was on the lint was wet and someone was taking the shower. The TS rewired the cord on the dryer and everything was good, simple as that. This was unusual for the TS to go this far but it bugged him enough to get to the problem.

[doug]

As a serv.-t-man when I was starting out those kind of call would make me think also and they are a good way to learn from.We also had the same rules not to go pass the mtr.but sometimes you have to just to satisfy the cust. or your self.That is something the young t-man will not forget.That is something that you will not learn in any classroom only otj.
Keep it up t-man way to go.

[loadbreak55]

Not being licensed electrician's ,we are not susposed to go beyond the meter.However, I will not leave a customer without power!Even if all I can do is isolate the the bad leg( on a partial power call )and jumper across the meterbase or main breaker to give the customer 120v,throughout the residence untill we can locate and fix the problem.We even will lay wire across the ground from the source to the meter if circumstances permit.We have generator's that we use also.The bottom line here is not to leave a customer without power if at all possible.It not only creates a good relationship with the consumer,but it feels good knowing we've done all we can for the time being.:)

[T-Man]

As far as I'm concerned a good troubleshooter, checks the problem, makes it safe first and then finds a safe way to give the customer power till more permanent repairs can be made. Don't get me wrong you can't leave anything in a dangerous way but I can't tell you how many old open three wire services with one wire down in a storm I hay baled together with insulinks and extra wire then twisted together in mid span from the ground till they popped up high enough to clear 10 feet off the ground or I pushed it up into a tree with a switch stick till our crews could get back and make permanent repairs just to stay moving from one outage to another. The line crews didn't care for that method because they didn't want to do repair but they can post for the next trouble job if they wanted like I did once. . .. The best job I ever had was being a troubleshooter.