Years ago, for us radio guys, they made a 'lightning strike detector' that mounted on the leg of a tower ... it would show a count, a count that incremented for every who knows how much pulse amperage occurred during the lightning current 'pulse' ... it makes sense they could do this on a power wire/line too.

You answered the question I was about to ask

@@uploadJ We have strike counters on the LAs (lightning arrestors) on our substation transformers and the big lightning towers that surround the launch pads at Kennedy Space Center have a lightning protection system that routes the lightning down through CTs and actually measures the current and duration of the lightning strikes!! Those white "candle sticks" on top of the towers are actually fiberglass to insulate the cantenary system from the conductive towers and the down guys on the towers have long ass string insulators to insulate the down guys from the anchors. Then at each down guy there is the down conductor that comes off the down guy and runs through a CT to do the actual measuring. Pretty interesting set up!

rate of change is one method that an FCI uses. The most prominent measure is level of current over time, like 800 amps for 30 milliseconds. A permanent fault (called a sustained fault) is defined as a high current event which yields an outage that lasts a minimum period of time, typically 1 minute, 3 minutes or 5 minutes, depending on jusrisdiction. If the time is less before power is restored then it is referred to as a momentary fault.

Could be. Or you saw all the TV Cable/Internet boxes with their red light on because they were running on backup batteries.

@@stargazer7644 That's what they were. Fault indicators for underground are inside splice boxes and transformer wiring compartments and said boxes need to be opened to check them.

​@@randacnam7321did you not see the end of the video where he showed that they can mount the lights visible from outside the box? Of course it is most likely that this person saw battery backups from the cable company.

@@napsterbater For all of the red lights to be fault indicators, the fault would need to be downstream in that particular primary. And these remote indicator light fault indicators are not commonly used by a lot of utilities.

If you're 15 and considering being a lineman, DO IT. I am 35, an engineer, and would skip college if I could do it all over again.

@@PsRohrbaughI agree with you! I am a fresh engineer, but definitely go through the technical route first, and if you want to get to the design and engineering aspect just learn your electrical fundamentals and you are set.

I've never seen those on the Oncor system (DFW area), but they sure would be handy for field personnel ...

YEAH HYI!

For lightning, the problem is often "ground" at your house 120V, being very different potential from gound at the far end of the telephone line. The insulation in the router and power supply ends up under a lot of stress and fails.

Hah that's pretty neat! I'm hoping to get more of them on our system. Thanks for the comment! 👊

I was always curious about Euro power distribution, we use a lot of overhead here in North America since at the distances we cover, underground can be very cost prohibitive.

@@crabmansteve6844 Cost is about the same for 22kV and below these days. Old lines that need replacing will be cabled 90% of the time if its on farmland or near built up areas. Proper cabled lines will last longer and have less faults over time as well. No need to worry about the elements.

Thanks Jer' I see ur still fishing tho! Hahha . You doing any work with the outages/ restoration?

@@Bobsdecline yeah we’re back into spring until Friday when it snows again so had to get out and fish! I helped with some residential clean up like trees on houses and cars, did some fiber repairs but that’s about it, directional boring class tomorrow with Vermeer though!

Man that sounds like our weather! We went from -45 one day to +10 two days later lol🤦‍♂️. Directional boring, that sounds like some some good training to have! We use it quite a bit here, but it's always contracted out... I've never done it myself

@@Bobsdecline yeah we build the manholes, do a lot of excavation, and directional boring so I’m excited, already been behind the sticks but the owner still wants me to go to the Vermeer school, I’m not gonna complain about it!

I learned to drive in the northeast and it's pretty funny when we get the tiniest bit of snow or ice in the south... the 4x4 "mud trucks" and mall crawlers sliding all over the place as I drive along just fine in my rear-wheel-drive truck.

Carolinas aren't bad for the money

Instructions show the overhead line clamp version can recharge the internal Li-Ion batts if line current is sufficient, there is a figure shown there in the literature/brochure from the factory ...

Ahhh ... the S&C Electric Intelliruptors do that, but the cost is a lot, lot more ...

Just need to add a few chips and a sim card to the design. Could report back real time info and monitoring

​@@hsimpson7267Or even better, a LORAWAN transceiver.. No cellular coverage required, except for the odd base station every 5-10 km or so.

Equipment like this doesn't go out for tender in the same way maintenance work does. Often times products and offers come in, but we choose them based more on quality and what's more tailored to our needs. Cost of course too. Also yes, Used it on the neutral as a precaution... It's a demo device not designed for system use and while their products are all certified through appropriate agencies it hasn't gone though our methods team as of yet. sometimes a grey area, but better to err on the side of caution.

Most (but not all) faults involve overcurrent.

I suppose they can also detect pulses of low current (open line). The specs said it can charge the battery when line current reaches 20 amps, that was interesting. I wonder how they handle solar panels downstream. Specs gave an upper voltage limit, curious, I don't know how it would be able to tell the line voltage.

The conductor size is related to the current, not the voltage. Additionally suspended power lines can be thinner for the same current than wires underground or in walls. I don't work in the industry but IIRC Aaron hasn't mentioned working with wires larger than 4/0 AWG. That's the same size you might find on the service feeder for a modern American home. It's about half an inch diameter.

Pretty good chance! Great spot to have em, going in/out of underground feeds.

Kind of, but a bit more complicated... If it lot when current stopped, it would light up with any power outage. It has to detect a sudden large increase in current. There's no real set amount of recommend uses. Most times they'll be installed and untouched. You could also have a set that's moved around and used to help find a nuisance problem on the lines. I paused the video there and see what you're looking at. I think it's just a reflection in the plastic, but I'll definitely check the unit when I jump in my truck tomorrow.

@@Bobsdecline cool, thanks for clarifying! Also thank you for taking the time to teach, I really appreciate it.

re: "it's an inductive pickup that charges an internal battery/capacitor," I do see where the company brochure does mention Li-Ion batteries, so ...

Two internal cells would power it for 20 years as per spec sheet.

Internal batteries.

Harvests power off the current transformer to keep an internal battery charged up.

Actual usage! 🙃 Some meters however also measure VA's as opposed to watts. A bit tricky to explain, but to try and make it simple; the power supplied vs the power used is not always equal. This unbalance occurs with inductive or capacitive loads. Most companies do not bill the customer for this imbalance. Industrial customers however are different (sometimes). A highly inductive factory can be quite costly having to generate the extra power. In those cases the customer may have to cover the costs of power losses. That's why it's important for a customer in that case to have capacitors to offset the inductive load. Also most commercial customers are bill for peak power used. Residential customers don't typically have huge start up loads, so we can better standardize the equipment and wire size. A large industrial customer may have a huge draw on start up. Regardless of average power used, the system must be built to withstand that peak load. Probably about as clear as mud.. ut there's a lot to metering.

Thanks so much. I’ve wondered about that for a long time - not something easy to search for. (BTY: I’ve lived in Ontario a year and Alberta for 5, but now in Connecticut! Just a backyard electrician lol.)

And just got to the end of the non-replaceable lithium cell. a 2400mA non-rechargeable. For an always-on device, that's some seriously low current draw in standby mode. There was some very good design work that went into this, craft, people choosing to do things of high quality because quality matters to them. I work in safety-critical areas, mostly focused on medical devices, and it's something that I've noticed is that there is a reason that we do these things, and it's because we save lives, we improve quality of life for others. It's important to us.

Um, why is he patrolling the line then - because a service interruption was called in? Something is down, not working ... so they help locating the trouble. Remember, these are used in groups on longer line segments too, and not all will fail.

If one of the phases goes out, it is probable best to intentionally shutdown the other two as well.

Only some underground cables. Basically it's a 2 in 1 cable... Primary and neutral.

IIRC it's to increase safety. The neutral shields the line and will prevent leakage if the cable is damaged or degraded.

​@@eDoc2020 also makes it insensitive to whatever the line is buried in. The inductance, capacitance, and leakage is all fixed per length of line.

Appreciate the comment! CT - Current transformer. They typically read current that has been reduced by the device to a lower more manageable level. High current could easily melt small wires normally used in metering equipment. These devices operate at a fixed ration; example 400:5. If the device reads 5 amp the line current wilould be 400 amp. In this case the device uses a CT to read the current and supply the reading/information to operate. Totally my bad, as I should have included a few minutes to explain how it operates as well. Perhaps a good topic for another video? - how does a fault indicator work!

@@Bobsdecline The 10.9Ah and 2.4Ah battery spec is wrong, they must mean Wh, there just isn't enough volume in the large indicator to house 10.9Ah of LiIon in there... 10.9Wh/3.6V=3Ah, so one high capacity 18650, that seems more reasonable. (underground version 700mAh). For such a quality product, the gross error in the spec sheet is a bit disappointing... :(

Ahh, I assumed CT to be centre tap of the transformer.

@@jovangrbic97 I'm sure it _is_ Ah. These are primary lithium cells, not rechargeable lithium ion. According to a Varta databook a 2.4Ah CR AH-R cell is only 9.5 cubic centimeters, so 10Ah should be about 40 cc. That's pretty small.

@@eDoc2020 indeed a 12.5Ah lithium battery is only 1 inch diameter and 4 inches long. You can of course get them in shorter variants with larger diameter as well.

made in Texas, by illegal mexicans lol

Lol

So that's why Texas is flashing red at night? Lots of fault indicators :P

@@Gazer75 I bet there are tonight after the storms that went through

Nice to see this comment... It's something that crossed my mind everytime I say "large outage" when a couple thousand are out. When we get hit by a major storm and see 100k home without power it's bad...very bad. Then I'll google outages from nearby states and see 800k or over a mill!

@@Bobsdecline The reality is "number of customers" probably isn't the best way to think about outages - number of spans, square miles, or some other metric is probably better. 2400 customers IS a large outage for you, it's just that the same amount of grid would probably cover 24,000 people where I live 😂

Yes exactly!