Mighty impressive!

Full video with sound:

 

Did they replace the fuse with a rusty nail? Are there no counter measures for something like this?

 

The way it jumped from the bottom to the top; does plasma-ized (for lack of a proper term) air conduct better than room temperature air, or was there likely vaporized metal in the cloud to get things started?

This is my personal favorite electricity is powerful video. Notice that the lights in all of the surrounding buildings went out. I wonder if it was due to EMF, or the lightning going up the neutral line?

 

does plasma-ized (for lack of a proper term) air conduct better than room temperature air

I believe the correct term is "ionized". And yes, it does conduct much better than normal air. And after it starts conducting, it superheats and so might also turn into plasma.

 

It started on the bottom left dual insulator/hanger. The arcing heat degraded the insulator above it causing the 2nd line to arc and in turn did the same for the top 3rd line. Eventually, someone shut the feed off but not before the bottom 2 lines had vaporized and parted. Progressive failure.

I was told long ago by a Ga Power Utility Lineman that they have a regular schedule to remove and clean these insulators/hangers to prevent this from happening. Apparently dust/etc settles/cakes on the porcelain insulators and eventually arcing over. This event does not appear to be in the US.

 

Pretty cool (or hot) stuff. Here is a website loaded with arcs and sparks including a few sub stations cooking off.

Ron

 

I think balloons should be banned!

 

I think balloons should be banned!

Just think, for a few hundred dollars of balloons, you could disrupt a few major cities for a while!

 

Tesla would be proud!!

 

We had some jackass throw a chain into the substation feeding the town of Cookeville and our Tenn Tech U. taking it out for several hours back in the 60s.

 

At the end you see a double tap.

 

We had some jackass throw a chain into the substation feeding the town of Cookeville and our Tenn Tech U. taking it out for several hours back in the 60s.

Too bad he didn't hang onto the end of it. In El Centro, CA, a stray cat crawled into a transformer vault. Its incandescent body was seen zooming through the air, but it de-powered an entire military base.

 

When I was a kid, one of our friends burned down the woods near our house. Ironically his father was the fire chief... but anyway, a wooden power pole holding the main supply wires to the neighborhood burned. After they put the woods out they apparently thought the pole was OK and left the scene, but later that day it broke off and fell over with the wires across some trees. There was the brightest orange arc from the wire to the tree, and the tree was full of glowing red spots and you could hear the steam escaping as it burned. It's one of those things that you don't forget, and even as a kid it was obvious that it was far too dangerous to get near.

 

The sound of kVs arcing is one that will stay with you after you hear it. A very memorable and unmistakable sound. Gives a whole new perspective on 60 cycle hum.

 

All put into perspective by Beirut.

 

The sound of kVs arcing is one that will stay with you after you hear it. A very memorable and unmistakable sound. Gives a whole new perspective on 60 cycle hum.

Yes. And I encountered another very memorable version of 60 cycle hum at a place I used to hang out on the banks of the Columbia River in Vancouver, WA. There are some really serious transmission lines there that are elevated on towers hundreds of feet high so they can cross the river with no danger to passing ships. The voltage must be about as high as you can get, like 500 or 750 kV. The sound is not a buzz but kind of a reverberant hum, constantly varying as the sound reverberates through the long, mechanically resonant wires. It's a really scary sound, like it's trying to tell you how much energy is involved and how deadly it is.

 

We had a huge hi voltage feeder going out to St Simons Island on the edge of our plant parking lot. In the hot and humid summertime at night it would dance with small bluish coronas along each of the lines giving off a peculiar snapping buzzing sound. Apparently ionizing the moist and salty coastal air it was passing through.

 

The worst hum is when a crane operator swings tha cable into an overhead whire while a lborer is guiding the metal pipe hanging from the cable. A very loud hum and the poor laborer falls down with his hands smoking. And his feet. All outside our classroom window got all of us to see. 1868, Delgado College, right outside the 5 story building.

 

The worst hum is the one I get after drinking half a bottle of gin...

 

I recall dense smoke from a wildfire in Northern New Mexico caused arcing and shutdown of a high voltage transmission line which supplied power to an Intel fab in Rio Rancho outside Albuquerque. A lot of wafers were ruined that day.

Edit: I found this from an Intel presentation. I like the reference to the shutdown as a "power bump".

"New Mexico Power Outage

The 500 acres of brush fire broke out in the north west portion of New Mexico, about 8 miles west of Farmington. The majority of PNM’s power is generated at San Juan generating station which is located very close to Farmington. Three major 345kV transmission lines that originate from this generating station feed power to much of New Mexico. These lines tripped off due to smoke from this fire over a period of 197 minutes (3 hours 17
minutes). The line trips led to a major power outage across the state.

Results of Power Outage

- As a result of the resulting power bump, at 17:18 hours power was lost to the entire site. Power was not restored until 19:15 hours.
- Impact to the site was that we lost nearly half of a week’s production (scrapped) and a number of facilities equipment were damaged.

Highlights:

- All Life Safety systems worked as designed
- ll UPS and Emergency Generators came on line as designed
- Utilized Y2K learnings and documentation to understand the impact of failed system

Lowlights:

- Did not understand the damage caused by power outage to manufacturing equipment
– 24 hour delay on parts ordering for manufacturing equipment"