{"id":705,"date":"2008-04-30T21:09:49","date_gmt":"2008-05-01T01:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/2008\/04\/30\/high-voltage\/"},"modified":"2008-04-30T21:09:49","modified_gmt":"2008-05-01T01:09:49","slug":"high-voltage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/2008\/04\/30\/high-voltage\/","title":{"rendered":"High Voltage!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m actually not entirely sure how finding these videos began, but some <em>shocking<\/em> videos for your enjoyment:<\/p>\n<ul>\n    <li>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=ZDr-2tnrofg\">Crazy man throws a wire on 110 kV power line<\/a>&#8221; is about as accurate a title as they come. (Highly, highly not recommended!) It&#8217;s essentially the same deal as a lightning strike: one end of the wire is connected to ground, and when the wire makes contact with the 110,000V power lines, it shorts to ground.<\/li>\n    <li><a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=8V3OZMW_45M\">This one<\/a> is even more absurd? Someone provides a translation of the Russian: they&#8217;re 500kV lines, and some idiots throw barbed wire (?!) onto the lines. You can&#8217;t see them throwing the wire, though, so there&#8217;s just a tremendous explosion as 500kV rushes to ground before, most likely, vaporizing the wire.<\/li>\n    <li><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"267\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OY72athcwvA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen title=\"Power Line Blast - Impressive. This is Safe?!\"><\/iframe> is really bizarre to me. One description says they&#8217;re using &#8220;splicing technology,&#8221; and another explains that they&#8217;re &#8220;strengthening the lines.&#8221; Neither really gave any explanation to why there&#8217;d suddenly be a tremendous explosion and plumes of smoke from all of the insulators. It looks like they sent enough voltage on the lines to jump across the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forestone.com\/powerlinecoronadischargemapping.cfm\">massive insulator<\/a>. (Which is like a six-foot chunk of porcelain, chosen because it&#8217;s ridiculously non-conductive.) Rusty gave a good explanation: it seems that they&#8217;ve applied something-or-other on the lines, and are essentially &#8220;flash-welding&#8221; it on.<\/li>\n    <li>Substations often have &#8220;air break disconnects,&#8221; which are essentially a big, metal, mechanical arm that they can &#8220;open&#8221; to keep electricity from flowing. The design wasn&#8217;t meant to to switch &#8220;hot&#8221; loads, though. <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=30R-XJD5IDw&#038;feature=related\">Here&#8217;s a video<\/a> of them opening the disconnect on a 230kV line, which&#8230; Well, just watch. (It shorts to another wire after a few seconds.)<\/li>\n    <li>Here&#8217;s <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"267\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2PaeJ3G3F6Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen title=\"High Voltage Electrical Wire Fire - Northfield, MN\"><\/iframe>, except it appears that it&#8217;s more of a technical failure. It turns into somewhat of an accidental Jacob&#8217;s Ladder, before it burns itself out in a fantastic fashion.<\/li>\n    <li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=SF5HuO-2Ci0&#038;NR=1\">This is a neat compilation<\/a> of various high-voltage &#8220;problems.&#8221; I actually saw a neat explanation somewhere of what happens in the first video&#8230; Something in a high-voltage transformer there shorts to ground, but nothing upstream ever tripped a circuit breaker. The transformer is filled with oil for cooling, before finally it becomes hot enough that it boils and starts spewing &#8216;steam&#8217; (boiling oil) out its &#8217;emergency&#8217; valves, which makes things much worse, but is actually fortunate in that it blows up the incoming voltage, leaving firefighters with a simple de-energized power grid full of burning oil to deal with. The second is another case of them opening a mechanical &#8220;air break&#8221; disconnect, apparently in a deliberate test of a 500kV system. Then we see the same clip we saw earlier, and then&#8230; The most awesome thing ever. I have absolutely no clue what goes on, but it&#8217;s the most awesome fireball ever.<\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m actually not entirely sure how finding these videos began, but some shocking videos for your enjoyment: &#8220;Crazy man throws a wire on 110 kV power line&#8221; is about as accurate a title as they come. (Highly, highly not recommended!) &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/2008\/04\/30\/high-voltage\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11,12,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool-links","category-insanity","category-interesting","category-rants-raves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}