Cutouts Tracking

[LAMartin.CVEC]

We've had problems with fuses blowing and the door not dropping. Usually, that is not really a problem, however recently we've had quite a few that have been tracking over.

Example: A serviceman went to a 4A (outage/power out) and found the door in and fuse blown. The house had no power but the street light at the Transformer pole was burning.

As you gentlemen are well aware, this could be a potentially dangerous situation under certain conditions.

My questions are:

Do any of your company's have a way of tracking how many hits a door has taken?
If so what is your policy?
Do you just replace the door?
Do you replace the cutout?

Any information would be appreciated.

Thank you and work safely,

L.A. Martin
Journeyman Div III
CVEC

[Lineman North Florida]

We've had problems with fuses blowing and the door not dropping. Usually, that is not really a problem, however recently we've had quite a few that have been tracking over.

Example: A serviceman went to a 4A (outage/power out) and found the door in and fuse blown. The house had no power but the street light at the Transformer pole was burning.

As you gentlemen are well aware, this could be a potentially dangerous situation under certain conditions.

My questions are:

Do any of your company's have a way of tracking how many hits a door has taken?
If so what is your policy?
Do you just replace the door?
Do you replace the cutout?

Any information would be appreciated.

Thank you and work safely,

L.A. Martin
Journeyman Div III
CVECWhat kind of fuses do you use? reason I ask is when we use to use KS fuses we had very few problems with cutout doors failing to open, when we went to K fuses it seems that this is the norm with jack doors not falling open and sometimes tracking.

[Pootnaigle]

Its been my experience that every cutout door that tracked over was on a transformer. leading me to beleive that as long as the current wasnt to great the tracking door would carry the load until it burned up.I never found one on a linefuse application.We simply replaced the door, and rummaged through the scrap cutouts for all the old doors we could find.The worst brand or most often found was made by Kearney.It got so bad that our storeroom started stocking brand new Kearney doors. I spoze all of em are subject to tracking but Kearney was the worst.To my knowledge no record was ever kept on that other than to list it as a cause on the outage report.
I have however found line fuse doors 30 feet away from the pole and on the ground one more than one occasion.

[MI-Lineman]

Like Poot said it seems to be the trnsfrmr fuses? Had one track down and jazz up a house durin a fire even though the fuse tail was danglin out of it. A fireman received a shock after he went tearin into a wall with an ax!:eek:

We keep no record and usually change the door unless it's an old Kearney switch.

[LAMartin.CVEC]

Thank you for your replies gentlemen.

I have spoken with a rep from Hubble the makers of the beloved ABChance cutouts and he told me that their barrels are designed to take 3 "hits".
But offered no way of tracking this in the field. I guess we'll have to come up with a way of doing that via outage management.

We use mostly S&C "K" or quick fuses on our system. In theory our laterals are designed like a sectionilizer system. The breaker will see the fault (bird or critter) blink the main line and clear. We have some highly developed areas where consumers complain of "blinks" that the laterals are fused lower to let the fuse just open.

I have seen personally, doors on tap lines not open and eventually burn the door down.

My biggest fear would be a door tracking and you have tree vs wire. As a father of 4 I could only imagine what it would be like to see a young child near a situation like that: it gives me the shivers.

If there is a way we could track this and make it safer for not only the public but us as lineman as well, then I see no reason why not to.

Work safely,

L.A. Martin
Journeyman Div III
CVEC